City Council - Special Meeting

I call this special meeting of the New Braunfels City Council to order. Today's date is August 18, 2026, and it's 5 o'clock p.m. We requested all cell phones and other devices be on silent except emergency on-call personnel. Madam Secretary Gale, can you please call roll?

Council Member Carter's not present at this time. Council Member Capizzi.

Here.

Council Member Edwards.

Here.

Council Member Spradley.

Here.

Council Member Lebowski. Here. Council Member Shaw. Here. And Mayor French.

I'm here. So a quorum is present. So we will now proceed. And please join me for the invocation brought to you by Councilwoman Lebowski and then followed by two pledges of allegiance.

Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you this evening, grateful for the opportunity to serve the people of New Braunfels. As we discuss our city budget, municipal services and tax rate, grant us wisdom and guidance. Remind us that the decisions before us are more than numbers on a page. They represent our taxpayers, our city employees, and our services that our residents depend on and the future of our community. Help us to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us. Guide us... guide our decisions with patience respect and understanding and help us make responsible decisions that serve the best interests of our entire community we ask your continued protection over our first responders city employees residents and family in jesus name we pray amen

Thank you everyone for being here tonight. We're gonna start off with the workshop and it's a presentation and discussion regarding the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget and plan of municipal services and the 2026 no new revenue and voter approval tax rates brought to you by Camerino City Manager.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, members of council. Today is the second of three workshops that we have scheduled. for this week. Today we will actually be going through departmental goals. So you'll hear from each one of our departments. They'll present to you departmental goals and then NBSTAT highlights. NBSTAT is the city's dashboard of departmental performance measures or indicators and metrics. And then we'll go through the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund and then Tanya Pence and Jonathan Packer are here to present the Convention and Tourism Fund and their budget. And then we'll also continue our discussion that we had at the tail end of last night, which was a tax rate discussion. And we actually have prepared three different scenarios for you, one being a no new revenue rate scenario, one being a one cent tax rate increase scenario, the other being a voter approval rate scenario. So we also looked at our sales tax revenues one last time after the proposed budget was presented to you last week on Tuesday. In fact, it was after that that we received a sales tax revenue report, which came in better than we had initially projected. So we've adjusted sales tax revenues to reflect that. So we'll show you what that, how much additional revenue that is able to provide to us as well as, and incorporate that, and we've incorporated that into the three budget scenarios as well. And then also on the agenda for tonight is a vote on the proposed tax rate. If you are ready, we've also posted it for tomorrow night as well. So that if you're not ready tonight, you can certainly take that action and vote on the proposed tax rate. Understanding that whenever you do vote on the proposed tax rate, what you're doing is setting the ceiling, the maximum tax rate. You can ultimately decide to adopt something lower than that. So I just want to make sure that that's very clear to you. Earlier today, I emailed to you a copy of all of the unfunded resource requests for each of the departments in the city. So I think it was 500 plus pages. And so happy reading with that. If you have any questions, please reach out. We're happy to try to answer any questions that you may have. But again, I hope that the budget scenarios that we present to you this evening will really help to, I think, focus the conversation about where you may want to be, if not maybe with the scenario, but maybe which tax rate you may wanna propose and give us that direction this evening. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and then I think we're gonna now then start on budget goals and then be stat highlights. And I think first up, do I need to press this?

I'll just hand it over to you.

There you go, Gary. Unless you want to. Next slide, next slide, next slide. Hold on.

Hold on. Okay. Stand by.

Mayor and Council, just so that you're aware, we also have scheduled for this evening a curve management study public engagement meeting this evening. And so Gary Ford and Jeff Jewell will be leaving after they make their presentation. So if you have any questions, please ask them before they leave. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Robert. Gary Ford, Director of Transportation and Construction Services and City Engineer. The Transportation and Construction Services, or TCS, has five divisions. The first one is Capital Programs. That's led by our Assistant Director, Scott McClellan, and responsible for all phases of project delivery across the city departments, and then also the city's Capital Improvement Plan. We also have engineering that's responsible for traffic and drainage engineering, and also design criteria. We have development services, which is a new division under our department that's led by Assistant Director Gwen Estrada, and is responsible for permitting, inspections, and certificate occupancy. The big item for us is really the customer service part. So again, that's something that we are improving and continues to improve. Transportation planning, both local, area, and regional, including our involvement in the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, and then transit. Ride the Rio, New Braunfels Transit District, from current operations to future planning as well. Some key goals and objectives for our department. The first one is the continuous permit process improvement. That's ongoing. So again, this is an ongoing and continuous process. We've added staff, including our assistant director, Gwen, We've reorganized staff and responsibility to be more responsive and to provide that customer service. We've updated and posted our performance measures, which I'll be getting to in the next few slides. And then also in process of updating our website. So our website is really in need of a comprehensive overhaul, really to let folks know exactly what is needed and what's required through the development process.

Thank you.

The next key one is complete and adopt our ADA self-assessment and transition plan. This is in progress for this year. And then for next year, we plan to adopt the ADA transition plan here in September. And then we're also doing a right-of-way assessment for all our public streets through 2027 that is funded through the Safe Streets for All, our federal grant. So again, an $800,000 grant to evaluate all our streets and identify the issues that we need to address. We continue to plan and provide multimodal transportation, that's what our entire team does, from capital programs, through planning, through engineering, and also through the development process. And then finally, launch a citywide microtransit system, that was for last year, but that's completed. We launched that in November, very successful, exceeded over 50,000 rides, and again, with a high customer satisfaction rate that we want to continue. The first performance measure that's on NBSTAT is really kind of an update and I really give credit to Gwen and her team of getting this where we need to see it. So really what this shows is residential new build permits. There's a couple of graphs. So the first one in green is our goal. Our goal is to review a residential permit, a new permit within 10 business days. What you see in red is the average business days to complete the review, and our goal is to maintain and be within that goal of 10 days, which you see how we're tracking there. And then you see the number of permits that are issued and the number of permits that reviewed. So again, you'll see kind of our workload in tracking these performance measures. So again, this is hot off the press and something that we've been using our tracking system to make sure that we're transparent and performing that data. And so you see when we have a high number of permits, then the days may trend upwards. But if it's lower, we anticipate a lower turnaround on residential new builds. Same thing for commercial new permits. We did the same exact thing. Here we have a goal of 20 business days. And then you see the average business days that we are looking at. And then with that, you see the number of permits issued and the number of permits reviewed. And again, this is available on NBSTAT. In addition to this data, we have public improvement permits, floodplain permits, letter of certification. So on the NBSTAT application, we have a number of these and highlighted the total number, in addition to the total number of inspections and reinspections. So again, these are the items that are also included in your performance measures in the budget handbook. And this is a total, I would say total revamp of what was provided in previous years. The next ones are capital and programs. So Scott leads his team. So currently you'll see how many projects are in final design, construction, preliminary design, all the way through closeout. You see that we budgeted for this year 49 projects at $50 million, but actually we are working on almost 70 projects at $57.7 million. So again, we have 65 active projects right now. in various stages. And once they get through final design, then the next phase over the next few years, it gets it in construction. So again, that goes back to the basis of the project manager that's in the budget and looking to provide that construction expertise. But again, we're involved in all phases with all city departments. The next one's transit. This is the latest transit regarding ridership. So we maintain all-time highs for returning riders over the last two weeks. And again, we had a record number just yesterday on the users of Rio. So we completed over 50,000 rides, exceeding our expectations on the service. And then we'll be looking to present the next year's service and increasing the number hours before starting at 6 a.m. because we were seeing a number of folks wanting to get to work. A big part of what we're seeing is a big transition. Mostly it was medical trips with our previous provider. Now we're seeing a good number of employment trips, medical trips, and then general use and recreational trips. Again, what we wanna see is providing mobility in all different areas for our community regarding transit, essentially at the same cost that we were providing for the ACOG Art Service. So with that, that ends my presentation. Be able to answer any questions related to the TCS department.

Yeah, thank you very much. Any discussion up here? No discussion. All right, thank you. Thank you.

Mayor, council, my name is David Ferguson. I'm the communications manager for the city of New Braunfels. I'm filling in for Jenna Vinson, who's the director of communications and community engagement. As you can see from the slide there, we have six current employees that are doing work in these major divisions, media relations, digital content and marketing, and then special events and community engagement, all part of our department. Using the strategic plan as a guide, we pinpointed several objectives or performance measures where communications can lead efforts or play a supporting role. These include continuing support for the Ride the Rio program that Gary just talked about, also a comprehensive recruitment strategy with HR, and the Envision New Braunfels update, continuing to inform the community about transportation options, hosting and enhancing community events and festivals, and developing a brand identity. In addition to the strategic plan goals, our department is always focused on keeping the public informed through many different communication channels while continuing to expand our reach. We always want to make it as easy as possible for residents to find information, so we try to meet them where they are. We use traditional media, social media, the website, newsletters, emails, text messages, and paid advertising. somewhat unique to fiscal year 27 should city council decide to call an election for a bond and or an update to the charter. We would deploy a comprehensive public education campaign this year to make the community aware of their opportunity to vote on those two items. As far as our stats and performance measures, two of the metrics that we track are media requests and social media reach and views. The city uses a centralized communications model, which means communications and community engagement manages all of the traditional media, social media, website, and graphic design for all city departments. That includes police, fire, parks, municipal court, library, etc. A media request, which you can see on the graph on the left there, is any time that a media outlet reaches out to our organization for information, a statement, an interview, we respond to all requests as quickly as possible and view traditional media as a partner to helping us spread important information to the community. A big important takeaway from this graph, by the way, is that the media interest in our community has grown quite a bit, especially in the San Antonio metro market. The number for fiscal year 26 is just through the beginning of August. Our estimate for the full fiscal year is about 530 requests from the media. And of course, not everyone uses social media, and that's why we make sure to also use other communication channels. But social media does remain our most prominent information channel. Our analytics on the right up there show all 15 of the city's social media accounts, and they demonstrate growth year after year that we're reaching. And of course, creating a large social media audience is our top priority. It's a very big priority for us. The larger our audience is, the more informed our residents are. And across all social media pages, we have more than 330,000 followers. Not shown on this slide, but a couple more important data points, website and newsletter audiences. In fiscal year 25, we had more than 2.1 million visits to our website. And across all four monthly newsletters that we have, we have more than 100,000 subscribers. And if I can be allowed a little shameless plug here, if you want to subscribe to some of those newsletters or you want to find out what's going on with the city, you can always go to newbronfels.gov slash stayinformed. And with that, I'll take any questions you have.

Any discussion up here? Councilwoman Shaw?

Does this capture the views of the city councils being shared live, like our meetings?

So that's a very good question. I'll have to go check. So that service goes through a third-party site. Granicus is the one that runs that, and so that would not be captured. The total number of watchers to that link would not be captured by our system, but we can contact them and get that information for you if you'd like.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Carter.

Hello. Hi. You're requesting another staff member?

Yeah, I believe so. Yes, ma'am.

Are you the director?

I am not the director. I am the communications manager. Jenna Vinson is the director of communications. Who is? Jenna Vinson.

Oh, Jenna. Where's Jenna?

She is unavailable to be here tonight. I'm sorry.

Okay. Well, you're a manager there, so you don't know if you need another person?

No, we definitely need another person, and we definitely requested another person in the budget. Yes, ma'am.

What are they doing? What are they going to do?

The communications specialist would be someone that is able to work across all of the different divisions in our department, right? So they would be able to assist with graphic design. They would be able to assist with social media, be able to assist with some of the kind of day-to-day duties, and then also special events would be a big one as well.

Okay. So you've got a lot of contacts, a lot of views. How many of those are New Braunfels?

I would have to go and pull that data. We have that data. We certainly could pull that and tell you, especially on the social media side, how many are from New Braunfels and then it breaks out all the different cities and then also countries as well. We can get you all that data if you'd like.

Yes, please.

Absolutely.

That's all I have, thanks. Okay, thank you.

Any further questions?

Go ahead.

Thank you for your presentation. How many employees do you have in your department?

Currently we have six.

Six?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, members of council, Jeff Jewell, Economic and Community Development Director. Whenever I get to talk about economic and community development, I always like to give a little bit of thought that economic development is not the end goal, it's really the means. Economic development gives us the resources, whether it's through tax investment, additional jobs, and the revenues that this organization needs to continue to do the community development, which is to continue to make New Braunfels a better place to live and work. So let me just highlight a little bit about what our department is doing. We work across both the private and the public sector in order to undertake our economic and community development activities. We're the primary staff for nine different boards and committees throughout the city. The Economic Development Corporation Board, the Downtown Board, Workforce Housing Advisory Committee, and so on and so forth. We have our Economic and Community Development Department, the New Braunfels National Airport, as well as the Civic and Convention Center. Economic Development is a team sport, so we work with our partners at the Chamber to grow and diversify the local economy by supporting existing businesses, working to attract new ones, and attracting strategic investment and expanding employment opportunities and increasing the commercial tax base. We also focus for our priorities around the Economic Development Corporation, around business retention, expansion, workforce support, infrastructure, investment, and quality of place development. So yes, this includes evaluating whether incentives can be used in a very measured way in order to achieve a better outcome in terms of jobs, investment wages and tax-based growths, but it also means supporting our workforce through making sure that there are attainable housing opportunities, expanded childcare, and the appropriate educational pathways that people can have in order to achieve and improve their economic conditions. In terms of public benefits, we think about and work really across the organization with both partners in the public and private sector to advance those places in our community that are underutilized and may need some thoughtful planning or infusions of capital to get to a point where they're more productive in providing expanded benefits to a broader set of our residents. And our Economic Development Corporation is one of the primary vehicles to do that. So whether it's investments into historically and completely underutilized gyms for expanded recreation space for our youth, or for pedestrian improvements in and around the green area, or to fix historic and long-term drainage, mobility and aesthetic issues in our downtown. But we also think about careful ways to deploy public-private partnerships with clear objectives, public engagement at the appropriate stages, performance milestones, clawbacks, and measurable public benefits in order to activate those places in the community that need really a nudge in order to achieve their full potential. Downtown New Braunfels continues to be the civic, cultural, and economic hub for New Braunfels, and we're constantly working to enhance its economic vitality, accessibility, appearance, safety, and overall visitor experience through ongoing planning and the investment of proceeds from various sources of funding that are supporting the downtown New Braunfels environment. So we coordinate those beautification efforts, the advancement of pedestrian improvements and other infrastructure improvements that helped contribute to a stronger platform for continued confidence by the private sector for continued investment in the downtown area. Two years ago, just as a quick example, we started a downtown facade and building improvement grant program. And since inception, that project has leveraged about $4 in private investment for every $1 in public investment that's coming from our tax increment zone that's focused on the downtown. These are efforts to preserve and enhance the existing buildings in downtown and continue to make those places continue to be successful. My final slide is about our two very high performing and beloved civic institutions, the National Airport, which was in 2026 named the TxDOT National Regional Airport of the Year. We continue to work with the airport to help it function as a safe, financially sustainable and high performing transportation and economic development asset for the community. We're really guided by the long-term vision of that airport, the airport master plan, which provides a roadmap for how we achieve the vision of becoming the premier general and corporate aviation center in the state. So we work with our airport director to evaluate and deliver resources so that the airport can meet current organizational as well as future infrastructure and asset demands. We know that they'll have to continue to meet in order to continue to be a safe and reliable transportation and economic development engine for our community. Finally, our Civic Center, which has more than 100,000 visitors, over 700 events come through our 25,000 square feet there on an annual basis. It's the largest air-conditioned contiguous event space really in the community, and so we see a wide variety of events there. everything from weddings to family reunions to quinceañeras to conferences to trade shows. And so there isn't a person really that's been in New Braunfels for any amount of time that hasn't been through this center at some point. And thanks to the vision of leaders from 20 years ago that undertook an expansion, of the center at the time. We're facing that same question again today. You all received a presentation a couple of months ago about what the future of the Civic and Convention Center could look like. So our goals over the next year are to continue that planning process and wrap it and continue those conversations with city council about how to move the Civic Center into the future. And of course, to continue delivering a great and consistent experience for our customers. With that, I'll take any questions.

Any discussion from up here? Go ahead. Go ahead.

Okay. I see you have 29 FTE. Can you give me the breakdown? I might have it somewhere if you can point me to it.

Yes, ma'am. Yeah. It was declined in order 15 at the airport, 10 at the Civic and Convention Center, and then four over here at City Hall. Here at City Hall.

Okay. And if you'll bear with me on this, these projects that you have done, could you produce for me or maybe you have it somewhere? a heat map of the three past years and the next two years of projects. So you can just give me a depiction, if you have it, of the city of New Braunfels and where those developments have occurred and where they're projected to occur. I'm looking for a diversification. Does that make sense?

Yes, ma'am, I think so. I mean, are you specifically looking for economic development initiated projects throughout the community that are funded by the EDC or by the tax increment zone, for example?

I don't really care who it's financed by.

We can put that.

If I have anything to dive further for, I'll ask for that.

We can put that information together.

And you can put it like by year. I don't care if it's red, white, and blue. Just so I can tell that In the year 2023, we had this development, 2024, 2025, and this is what we project. Yes, ma'am. It'll be for 27 and 28, I guess.

Okay.

I just want an idea of how that has been breaking and where it will be breaking for diversification purposes of the city.

So we're not...

I mean, I'm really looking at, are we sinking one part of the city and we're elevating another part of the city type of thing, which I realize some of that has to do with land availability and all that, but we have a lot of projects out there. Also at the airport, I keep hearing about this airport that it's a real winner and it's taken down these awards. How is that so? I mean, what is it that we're doing that's remarkable? We've got 30 folks out there. Are they working shift work? Or no, we've got 15 people out there. I'm sorry, I doubled your staff.

Yes, we have 15 folks out there.

Are they working shifts out there or is it all 15 on board?

No, the airport is staffed effectively about 14 hours a day, seven days a week. So out of that, there's three kind of customer service representatives, 10 line personnel, one operation manager, And two maintenance, well, one maintenance technician right now, there's no one proposed in the budget. And then our airport director. So those line service as the largest group of employees out there do handle the shift work. They're the ones that are out there for about 14 hours a day, seven days a week on average. But that staffing, aviation kind of moves in peaks and troughs, so to speak. And so they kind of staff as they're needed. But to your question about, well, I mean, the airport has completed a significant number of capital improvement projects over the last few years. It has been successful in attracting investment, not only from TxDOT, but also from the Economic Development Corporation, for example, in supporting it. The airport has continued to see a rise in operations and fuel sales. And, you know, there's really effectively two businesses out there. There's the fixed space operation, which is kind of the retail side of aviation, which is everything from fuel sales to services delivered to customers that are coming in to tie downs to marshaling of airplanes moving around. And then there's also kind of the airport management side. So that's maintaining the airfield assets themselves. That's maintaining the infrastructure, the lighting. That's tenant relations with folks that are leasing our existing facilities. And so I think we've had a pretty good track run of success dedicated to the staff that are out there that work very, very hard on making sure that people have a great experience out there and a safe flying experience.

So is that a self-sustaining operation or is that getting city taxpayer funding too? Or is it a mix?

No, ma'am. It is an enterprise fund that is self-sustaining. So the revenues that are generated out there pay for its operational expenses. Okay.

So 100%? Yes. Okay, good. So do you foresee more of the same? Are you asking, are their headcount then under that enterprise fund, so their profit, can they hire as many people as they need? I can see this is not an easy answer.

Well, I think just like every organization, I think that there's a balance of what needs to be struck. There's infrastructure, equipment, and personnel needs that are always needed by the airport. And so the airport has seen staff added really every year for the last five. Equipment has been added. Most budget requests, as long as the airport has the revenue to support it, have kind of come through and been materialized out there. So it's just, I guess, continues to be a balance about how to balance the competing demands out there.

And if I may add to that, with regards to the proposed budget, actually all of their budget requests were actually funded in the proposed budget.

But it's funded from within the profit?

From within its own revenue, also including some, I think it's some EDC help with regards to grant matches, but all of their requests were funded, ma'am.

Okay.

Okay.

We do approach the EDC on a pretty regular basis. Let me kind of clarify what I'd said about self-sustaining. From an operational and from a majority of ongoing expenses that they do have, the airport generates enough revenue in order to cover those costs. When there's a significant capital improvement project, we'll approach the EDC about perhaps making an investment on a particular item that's coming in front of the airport, just because... They may not have necessarily the capital available to make an $800,000 investment, which is what the EDC made recently as a couple years ago for reconstruction of the North Apron. It was an $8 million project and required a 10% match. And so the EDC put that forward on behalf of the airport. So I just wanted to augment that they're not always funding all of the capital needs themselves.

So they should be able to be pretty state of the art out there for a regional. I'm not sure that they're able to keep up with the current day's operations. Do they have enough money for that? I'm just looking at budget load and if there was an emergency need that we would foresee out there. You don't see anything?

Well, I'm not exactly sure what the question is. Can you clarify?

Well, let's take for example, you didn't name a firefighter by chance, did you? I didn't hear you say that there was a fireman on duty.

No, no, there are no firefighters on the field.

So is that traditional in a regional airport? And forgive me, I'm a little ignorant on this, but say that the plane crashed over there. Is that normal to not have a firefighting equipment on? I mean, how close is the closest airport?

The closest airport or the closest fire station?

I'm sorry, fire station.

Closest fire station is going to be on 46 just before 758. Is that number six?

Yes, that's correct. Okay. Fire station six.

That's fire station six. For airports of our size, they're called ARFs, which is basically a dedicated firehouse. They're typically gonna be required if the airport achieves kind of commercial service, but we haven't identified really a need to have on-field firefighter emergency response presence at this point.

Okay, when I hear lofty, presentations, not that you've done that or anything, but I've heard that this airport is growing, that it's getting national recognition and all that. I would anticipate that there's a lot of planes going in and out of there. which would seemingly increase the risk from my standpoint, but I've never run an airport before. So I'm just trying to foresee the future because in budgets, we have to forecast. And if the city has responsibility for that airport, I would think sometime there may be a reason to come back at the city for budget funds. That's why I'm asking the questions.

Okay.

Growth means what? More risk.

Sure. We can provide you some information on when the fire department has been called to respond to the airport, what that response time has been, because they are in close proximity to the airport. And so we can provide you that information.

You didn't mention the miles or the half miles.

I don't recall the miles, ma'am, but they are on 46 before you get to 758. kind of the, I can't remember the name of the subdivision, but it's not. It's Stonegate. Stonegate, thank you. Appreciate that.

It's my district. And you also have the second fire station, number seven, which is on 306 across from, right next to MBU. H-E-B, yeah. So for me, there's two close fire stations there.

Thank you. I appreciate you mentioning that. With regards to, being able to fund an emergency. They do have a reserve in the airport. And so that I think is a reflection of their ability to generate revenue over expenditures that they've been able to accumulate a reserve as well. And so there are some funds. Is it enough for, I don't know what that emergency may be. But certainly they do have some reserves that they can tap into in an emergency.

Okay. All right, very good, thank you. That's all I have.

Councilman Edwards.

In the future, it would be nice to see it done immediately. But as we look at flight operations, a breakdown between flights that originate from us and return to us in a daily environment, whether it be training, pleasure from that, what are out of area, overnights, business related that generate overnight or daytime exchange where they're flying in from Dallas here for work for the day and go back or long distance so we can see that. And then what may be going on with the training, is that counted in the flight so that we can see where the flight use is generated and the dollars, which ones are paying into runway fees and what those are so we can have an understanding of that? And then some of the things I think advance information coming to us about where your revenue has been restricted because you're an enterprise fund, whether it be the lack of hangers, which was a great problem for us for a long time, Tia and others, and investors coming in. And then what are some things that are needed by the airport to enhance that? to be able to generate, because I think Stinson is like full. They don't have any room to expand and so on, so there's migration coming out of Stinson. The smaller fly-ins are all full. San Marcos, I don't know where they stand in the economic value, but with our national flagging, what the long-term, short-term look is, and we've been making great gowns, but it's just like that group we bought in and tried to discuss. is where can they locate out there? What are the things we have to overcome? There's the realignment of Sanger Hall. So it's a very complex mosaic to help it get going and, well, help it keep growing in a sustainable manner and what tools have to be activated to do that. So it makes sense.

Yes, sir, thank you for your comments. With regard to the mix of traffic, I have that information readily available and can get that to the council as soon as possible. And then for... We're always thinking about what are the next steps in order to position the airport for its next phase of growth. Over the last couple of years, we've done a couple of really key critical engineering and development standards exercises through creation of the airport drainage master plan, which gives us an idea about how to phase drainage as new development comes online, as well as the creation of a design and control document which sets a specific set of development standards for airport that is compatible with aviation and aeronautical activity, and just kind of removes some conflicts we were seeing with our current development standards.

So that has been...

Those two projects were done in collaboration with various departments throughout the city. But just speaking to the kind of to the next phase of the airport's evolution.

I mean, and there's a lot going on. I mean, you've got to maintain that runway. It's got to be kept clean. There are certain things you don't want debris coming up into those props. And the backgrounds and the maintenance and all those things in the buildings and so on. Do you have any information of what Cirrus has generated? Because they're a prepare site, correct?

Yes, it's a Cirrus service and training and training. flight school basically. I don't have specific numbers around their economic impact but they do occupy a hangar and we have folks flying in and out to use that facility in order to get repaired or to leave them for checks or to actually just receive recurrent training or training on that particular type of airplane.

Did we see a number of the planes coming in for upholstery redo because we have Offsite, we have the company does aircraft upholstery only, which they have to have an FAA rating.

You know, I could get a particular tenant mix for you if you're interested in kind of the tenant mix. We've talked about the airport, you know, when we talk about it being an economic development engine for our community, there's handfuls of businesses out there that it's not just all basically private planes. It's repair shops. It's avionics repairs. It's air transport medical. It's charter companies. It's a lot of different folks operating out there, and I could... try to rustle up kind of the latest tenant mix for you all and give that to you all. So you can kind of see the nature of the businesses that are out there.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Lebowski?

Yes. It was mentioned that one of your biggest challenges moneymaker was the fueling. Tell me a little bit about that. Who comes in and fuels there?

Well, we sell the two primaries of types of airplane fuel, which is Jet A and 100 low lead. It's about an 80-20 split in terms of 80% being jet, which is used by turbine engines, jets, as well as turboprop airplanes. And then the 100 low lead is used by kind of typical pissed in airplanes kind of times that you would see training being done in. So folks that are coming in to either they're using the airport, either they're tenants themselves or they're coming in kind of what we call itinerant travel, which is kind of stopping in, doing some business here and then leaving. So that's really the mix. It's not only local folks using the airport and tenants, but it's also customers that are flying in and using the airport on a regular basis or on a occasional basis.

Thank you.

Councilman Spradley, go ahead.

Mr. Jewell, thank you for the presentation. Can you talk to the FAA grants that the airport receives?

Well, sure, the FAA provides a number of grants. Really, a lot of those grants are administered through the Texas Department of Transportation, the Aviation Division, because we're a block grant state. So the FAA provides those funds directly to TxDOT, and TxDOT administers them throughout the state. So there's kind of a consistent set of grants, whether it's the... the RAMP grants, which is just kind of an annual $100,000 reimbursement for pavement repair, things like that. TxDOT itself, through the TxDOT budgeting and appropriation process, receives an annual budget that it works, its aviation planners work to kind of distribute throughout the state on kind of the most critical needs. So we work with TxDOT to develop a capital improvement program that identifies a lot of our infrastructure needs out there. Recently, with the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, New Braunfels National received five years of commitments through the IIJA, which is what that short is. And so that, again, those funds are, it's about $638,000 annually for the last five years. We have deployed those funds into new security fencing around the entire airport. That was a long sought after project. And then recently those funds are going towards pavement repairs and the reconstruction of some taxiways.

Isn't there talk to make the tower larger?

That's through another FAA funding process. We've completed preliminary design for a new air traffic and control tower. So that siting process, that preliminary design process has been completed. We did not get funding for the tower construction this last funding round. We're gonna make another go at it here in the next year, and hopefully that funding can be awarded. It's about a $15 million project.

In order to apply for those grants, the airport has to meet certain criteria, is that correct?

Well, I mean, the FAA has to have identified a critical need, and the FAA identified a need given the airport's importance in the national airspace system. They took an interest in our airport and the airspace around it. We are a controlled airspace, and it's getting busier and busier, frankly, both with the growth of San Antonio and with Austin. And given the operations increases, an ongoing tempo at the airport that has seen an uptick, especially in the last three to four years. They took an interest and said, you know, this tower, which was originally built as a training tower almost 20 years ago, it really wasn't, at the time, adequate. It was adequate at the time, it's not adequate in today's operations, and so that's why we took a great interest in seeing that this tower could be developed.

And lastly, the 15 employees you have at the airport, none of those are air traffic controllers. That's paid for through the FAA.

Right, our air traffic controllers are all contract staff through the Federal Contract Tower Program.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor Boateng? Yes, sir. National Airport of the Year Award. Just wanted to reiterate that as well, too. Tell us a little bit about what it takes to win that award. the competition that we're up against for that. And just kind of explain that a little bit too.

Well, the Texas Airports Council nominates, receives nominations for airports throughout the year based on different categories. local and municipal, national, regional, and so on and so forth. And so the committee that selected, I wasn't involved with the judging of that. They just evaluate, put together a narrative around it, and these are the improvements that have been completed over the last five years, for example, and this is what has kind of resulted, both in terms of operations and expanded opportunities out there. So it was a great distinction. I believe the airport won maybe it was regional airport of the year back 15 years ago. So that was kind of the last time that the airport got, which was kind of, I think it was about that time, 2011, 2012 maybe, is when it got. So I don't have the details around the process. I just know that we received it and they got it at the Texas.Aviation Conference this summer.

All right, thanks.

Well, congratulations on that anyway.

Well, that's due to the, staff and leadership out there that oversee the daily operations of what's happening.

Any further questions?

I just wanna say thank you for great representation at the airport because that's, thank you.

Thank you. I have just a few questions that everyone's asking about the airport. Okay. So I'll have maybe some on the airport. You have 15 personnel out there, and that's 24-7? Do you guys operate at night?

Well, they're not, it's not staffed 24-7, but there's always somebody that's gonna be on call. There's somebody that gets there. Our tower operates from seven to seven, so it's a 12-hour tower operation, and so they're there about an hour before to about an hour to after the tower closes, so it's a 14- to 15-hour-a-day operation. But if there's any kind of call outs, our staff that is on call any given night does go out there and if they need service, whether it's cargo loading, unloading, whatever it may be. So airplanes can land without anyone in the tower? Yes, sir. Yeah, after the tower closes, we become an uncontrolled airfield. Why is that?

Isn't that like a safety concern? I'm just wondering, because in the military, well, just in any airport, you have to have a 24-7 manned air tower if it's operational, right?

Airports are classified. They kind of get an airspace designation. San Antonio is classified as a Charlie airspace, as well as Austin. We're classified as a Delta airspace. I wouldn't say that it's necessarily unsafe. There are a lot of uncontrolled airfields all over the state, all over the country. And our tower does operate really during the busiest times. Our peak traffic is during the day. But I will say that there has been discussions from our tower contractors about potentially extending those tower hours a couple hours into the evening.

So you never have two planes landing at the same time? How do they communicate together?

They communicate on the common traffic frequency after that 7 p.m., which pilots are responsible for knowing. They're responsible for communicating their position and talking to the other airplanes in the area.

What if there was a big accident at 12 at night? How would anyone respond? Well, we've actually have had incidents. I know. There might be an accident. I see a big problem here. Maybe it's just me. but the fire station's not being there. I mean, there's no fire, do these trucks have foam?

I'm not sure about the particular. There are emergency protocol response plans for the airport that the airport has worked out with the fire department. We can get more detail around that. But there have been incidences in the late at night that our staff as well as emergency personnel have responded to. Thankfully, nobody's been hurt. But there have been incidences that have happened at night, whether it's An airplane's landing gear did not come down and they had to put the airplane down on the runway without landing gear. Or one particular instance last year, 18 months ago or so, an airplane basically was traveling in from North Texas and ran out of fuel and glided down short of our runway.

You never have anyone that just wanted to land out there with no permission? You don't necessarily need permission to land at an airport. When we have planes land there, do we not ask them for any form of money to use our runways?

Oh, we do not have landing fees currently. That is discussed as a revenue strategy, but it is not something that either our- I think it would be a good idea.

That's a good form. of revenue, I think that'd be pretty good. Doesn't have to be too steep, but these people have money, and if they want to use our runways, they can pay for them. And the convention center, I'm kind of worried about the convention center, and sometime in May and April, of course, we were in campaign season, and I found out there were close to $900,000 in debt. Is that true? Is it still that way? How far debt are we?

No, sir, the mayor? Yes. This is Jared. The Civic and Convention Center is not in debt. That debt service is paid off this fiscal year. That was for the renovation that occurred approximately 20 years ago that Mr. Jewell referred to earlier.

That was a big question that was brought up to us on stage. That was very big. I'm just kind of confused on why they asked that question if we had no problems. That was one big question. Okay, that was a big question. I don't want to rewind time for everyone. But my main concern was, are we making enough for what we're doing at the convention center to keep that thing afloat? If it wasn't in debt at all, I don't know why we're asked that question. But that's all I got. I'm not happy that there's no one there at night. And I think that runway fees may be a good idea. That's all I got.

Jeff, if I may, we are not a CFA Part 139 airport, right? A 139 airport requires, because that says we're taking a passenger at 31, that's when a dedicated fire department's required. The second we enter that, and we're not that, right? So at this time, Anyway, so, but at some point in time, I think there's a trigger level in the rules that says we will need response within three minutes, but I don't think we're at that volume yet, Orme.

I'm not quite sure about what those thresholds are that would establish an on-field fire emergency response unit, but I can look into that information and get it to you.

139 dictates size of aircraft and the number of occupants of which it becomes a federal mandate under FAA to do that. I know we're not at that step yet, and so on. And when we go dark, when the controllers go, we're on the automated system, right, where we have a beacon for them to know the approach, correct?

Right, and in addition to the common traffic frequency that airplanes are required in order to use and communicate their position relative to the airport if they're intending to land in New Braunfels, we also have an airport beacon that all airports really have. It's a rotating green beacon. light that shows where an airport is at night. But so yeah, and airplanes that are on an instrument flight plan too, whether they're gonna be handed off from San Antonio or Austin will also provide traffic advisories if they're in kind of instrument conditions, which is you can't see, you can't have any kind of reference to the horizon. So does that answer your question?

And FAA dictates, do they dictate the operational time on the tower for us, what they fund from the federal on comptroller?

We receive a grant from them in order to fund the operations of the tower.

Yeah, the funding mechanism.

But like I mentioned, the tower hours have been looked at given the, nature of the traffic going into a little bit later. So that is something that is being evaluated.

How do we keep track of who lands there at night? I mean, tail number, how do we keep track of that?

Well, the tower keeps track of those operations during the day, and then our staff out there actually can keep track of who kind of came in and out using different kind of tracking data.

At night, what if, Anybody, drug dealers, anyone who wants to land out there. I'm just making this as I go. Someone's got to keep track of planes at night. You know, tail number, just who is getting on this airport. It's a big safety thing for me. I don't want any bad guys. We're in the corridor of crime, right? So we don't know who's going out there at night, who's landing, who's unloading what material. I don't know. But anyway, Councilman Carter.

I'm going to Lee's point on this CFR 139, 343 it looks like. I'm gonna get educated on airports, thanks Lee. it alarms me that you don't know how far we are away from that. So could you, maybe for the future, it's certainly a budget item, kind of forecast out, when you talk about growth, we should be forecasting how we're gonna grow and financially how we're gonna grow and activity-wise how we're gonna grow I would expect to see forecasts of when we're gonna hit these restrictions or additions to security because that could be very impactful to y'all and to the folks out there in operations and certainly to the city. I know it's an enterprise fund, But where are they going to go when they run out of money? We're going to have to lean on the city, right? I mean, that's the way that I believe enterprise funds go. I'm in one, so that's how we have to do it. We have to go to Congress for that on the federal level. So I guess we're the Congress. But, you know, we need to know that kind of thing from a budgetary standpoint. Does that make sense?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, very good. Thank you.

Also, Mayor and Council, we do have an airport manager that understands all the FAA requirements. That's Dr. Robert Lee, that unfortunately couldn't be here this evening because of a death in the family. And so to your point, Council Member Carter, we do have an airport manager that does understand all those FAA requirements that can speak to those issues. And we just work very closely in trying to help him.

Right, I appreciate that, but I wanna see it on paper or on my computer that we have a forecast anticipating our debt load or how we're going to get there financially. So I'd like to see how those numbers and how this all starts translate, even if it takes us 20 years to get there. The way that I've heard about this airport in the past year, I feel like we're gonna become a secondary San Antonio, which is fantastic, but that comes with expense.

It does.

And that's why we're here.

It does, and if it grows, it also comes with revenue that's associated with that.

Absolutely.

And as we have been successful in managing an enterprise fund that is actually self-sustaining. And we will continue that model as well.

That's fantastic. Is the Civic Center, is it also self-sustaining?

No, ma'am, and it never has, even since it's opened. Really? Part of it is covered by the Hotel Motel Tax Fund, which is an eligible expense, and frankly, that's kind of the case in most cities where the Civic and Convention Centers may not cover all of its costs, but some of those costs are covered by the Hotel Motel Tax Fund. In fact, we'll be going through that this evening.

Any of those enterprise funds, we've gotta push for more of the enterprise stuff.

And the other enterprise funds, we'll be discussing enterprise funds tomorrow. We just know that we won't have enough time tonight. That's why we sort of moved them till tomorrow night The council can spend more time on the scenarios that we've developed for you all to consider this evening, but we'll certainly be discussing those enterprise funds in more detail tomorrow night.

All right, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Hi, city manager and Jeff. My question is, didn't y'all have a presentation on the airport, on the growth? I remember y'all having a presentation.

We have traditionally done a presentation about once a year on the airport. We've actually been talking about an upcoming presentation. We're just trying to navigate agendas at the moment. So yes, absolutely.

I think we went out there last year as a council or something.

We had an airport showcase last October.

Yeah, I think it might be beneficial to go out there again. A lot of what was mentioned, I mean, I've seen it.

Yes, sir. Any further discussion? Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Sandy Paulus, Director of Finance. The Finance Department currently has 17 staff members, and we have four divisions, accounting and treasury management, purchasing, grants, and budget management. And you can kind of see from the chart what falls under those areas. So two of the goals that I would like to highlight for y'all tonight are ones that the finance team are really excited about. And the first one is the development of a formal internal audit program. Now we presented on this last year in this goal presentation during the budget development, or during the budget workshop. and at that time we were getting ready to develop it for the fiscal year 26 and now it's had a year or almost a year of functioning and so I wanted to give you an update on how that looks. But just as a reminder, this program evaluates the existing controls and how they're working, the adherence to laws and regulations and policies and Also, possibly any improvements that we can have in processes or efficiencies. And so this was the audit program for this year. And by the way, when I say we did this audit program, it was my assistant director Becky is the one that developed this program and has been its champion all year. So I want to give her credit. So in Q1, we did the PCard audit, and that involved evaluating PCard transactions, supporting documentation, approvals, adherence to the PCard policy. And when that was completed, it was determined that we were in compliance with our PCard policy. But some good things that came out of that audit were we updated our PCard policy, and then also we updated developed some mandatory trainings for new PCARD users to take before they get their PCARD issued to them, and then refresher training, mandatory refresher training for existing PCARD holders, and those have to be repeated every two years. Both of those trainings are followed up by an assessment, and that has to be scored. You have to get 80% or higher to pass. So that was a good thing that came out of that. In Q2, we did the payroll and timekeeping audit. And in that one, we verified that our processes were accurate and compliant, assessed if our internal controls could prevent or detect errors, and confirmed that we were following city and FLSA policies. Overall, that was also determined that we were in compliance, so that was good. And some of the good things that came out of that was we updated again our related policies. And we also were able to make sure that our recently implemented ERP was calculating and processing payroll in the way that we intended it to. And then finally, Q3 is the audit that's going on currently. It's in progress. It's cash handling. So currently the accounting team has updated the cash handling policy and they have submitted it for review, so it's being reviewed. And then they've also conducted cash audits around the city. And so once we analyze the results of those cash audits, then we will determine what additional audit needs to be conducted related to the cash handling. And then in Q4, it'll be wrap up and follow up from the prior three quarter audits and then our plan, we'll develop our plan for next year, for fiscal year 27. So the other goal that we're really excited about is this development of a public or a finance workshop for the public. So we wanna develop this in order to provide citizens with a high level overview of how municipal finance works. It's kind of a mystery I think to a lot of citizens and so we feel like we would like to give them an informal environment where we can explain in more detail how this works, give them a chance in a relaxed environment to ask questions increase our transparency. present currently in City University about finance, but it's a very, very high level. So we envision this being a little more in-depth. Oh, did I, I'm sorry, I didn't. Oh, that is it, okay. A little more in-depth where we will cover all the city, different types of funds that the city has, what they can be spent on, how are they funded, what are our major revenue sources, how is our money expended or where is it expended, the budget development process, how that works, how's the budget monitored all year long, audits, internal controls, financial reporting, and then of course, again, a chance for the citizens to ask us questions. We envision these workshops to be probably one to two hours long, we're still determining that, and we'd like to have our first one, we're hoping to have it by the end of this calendar year. After that, based on the budget, based on the response that we get and questions and any suggestions, then we'll determine how frequently we will hold these and when the next one might be. And then finally, I wanted to highlight one of our metrics that we present on MBSTAT. So finance has several metrics out there, and two of them have to do with sales tax. And I thought this one, I wanted to highlight this one because I thought it was interesting. It shows sales tax revenue by percentage by industry. So I have up here your industry categories on the left, and then I've provided just some examples of New Braunfels businesses that fall under those categories. And these categories are the categories that the state comptroller uses, and actually they're the categories that the federal statistical agencies use to do analysis on the U.S. economy. So that's where these come from. So as you can see that, of course, it's probably no big surprise that our largest contributor to sales tax is the retail industry, followed by food and general services. I think it's important to note that HD Supply, which we've talked about a lot recently in their contribution to sales tax, falls under wholesale. And so if you look at the graph, you can see that in fiscal year 21, the wholesale category is the gold one, and it's much fatter, and then it gets really skinny. And then in fiscal year 26, where we've got data here through May, sales tax collections through May represented here, it gets fat again. So in fiscal year 21, that was the last year that HD Supply contributed to sales tax before they changed their business model. and they were at 19% of contribution. So then after that, it goes down to about 6%, and then now this year through May, they're up at 17% again. So with their contribution to sales tax, wholesale becomes the second highest industry after retail. I think that's all I have. Do you have any questions?

Councilwoman Shah, go ahead.

Thank you for the information and I think the finance workshop is a outstanding idea. I think, I'll speak for myself, I didn't have really much of an understanding what it takes budget-wise to run a city until I sat down with Mr. Warner and my mind was like, wow. So I think educating the citizens at that level so they have a better understanding where the money comes from, where it goes, how it's filtered through and the buckets it goes to and all those things is gonna be profoundly helpful in the future. So I appreciate you guys putting that together. Thank you. We're really excited about it.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Yes, sir. I just wanted to echo the exact same thing Council Member Schell said as well. I think the workshop is a fantastic idea and I can't wait for you to roll it out. I think you all do an excellent job. This is something that you all came with internally on your own, right? To come up with and just to educate the public. So kudos to you. I think it's an excellent idea. So I'm looking forward to it coming up. Maybe I'll sit in it myself.

I just want to say that doing it at the end of the year is so quickly, so I give you kudos for that also. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear what you said.

That I said that y'all putting it together at the end of the year, that's so quick, and kudos on that. Thank you.

Councilwoman Carter?

I just was following up. I want to ask the P-Card audit. That was, you supplied that to us at my request. And was there just a P-Card audit? There wasn't a travel audit. Is that right? Because they are considered one and the same?

It was just anything on the P-cards.

Okay, so the travel involving P-cards. Anything that's charged on the P-cards. And you don't do a separate travel policy adherence? We do have a travel policy. But do you audit that for adherence?

Yeah, no, just anything that was on the P-card. Okay. Charged on the P-card.

Thank you.

Anyone else up here? So as far as who gets audited, is there a list? Is it just the city, the EDC, everyone?

No, it was just the city.

Okay.

We don't issue P cards to the EDC.

Okay, so the results of everything is gonna be at the end of this year, the end of the fourth quarter? of everything that you're doing here?

There's already been a report issued on the P-card audit.

Okay.

And one on the payroll and timekeeping, yeah.

The internal audit program development, I'm looking at four quarters here, and I'm just trying to understand it being an outsider. The end of the fourth quarter, shouldn't there be a result of everything that you're doing?

We've been presenting results, the reports, as they wrap up, as they're completed.

And where are those results posted for everyone?

Mayor, we've presented the results of these internal audits at the Finance and Audit Committee meeting. We'd be happy to provide the reports and findings from everything that's been completed this fiscal year and send that out.

Thank you. That's all for me. Thanks. Anyone else?

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

So, you know, you currently see the work chart and the fire department consists of 171 firefighters, where 153 are the men and women at the fire station. We have 18 that are in support services, support services consisting of EMS, training, and the fire marshal's office. So I want you to kind of have a global view of where we are and where our staff is located in that same EMS divisions where you have the mobile integrated health program that you asked about the other day. And inspection kind of has their own fire marshal under the command of Chief Pitzer. So one of the, because we have some new council members, I wanna talk a little bit about the contract with ESD7. So ESD7 is the only corporate areas of Comal County that includes Mayfair and Veramendi, one of the fastest growing areas in our region. We provide full fire, EMS, and in those two divisions, part of the ILA, we provide the inspection services for that area. They account for approximately close to 12% of our call volume. And it's important because they provide, it's a contract. They give an annual payment. The contract, as you can see, there's been some enhancements in how much they pay. In 2025, we had a renegotiation where myself and Assistant City Manager Jared Warner negotiated a new contract that took the payment from 2.7 million to 3.9. Now that enhancement that is almost 1.2 million is what we use to provide the SCBAs last year. That was the largest capital purchase. And the reason I'm talking about this is because one of our goals is to provide new ways and enhancements and efficiencies and deployment for the fire department. This new SCBA apparatus is not just replacing old air packs. It's including the face piece, the RDIs, this is new technology, Bluetooth technology that will allow us to monitor and know where our firefighters are when they are in IDLH, and that is an environment that is immediately dangerous to their health. Also, recently you heard the city manager talk about the Safer Grant that provided 12 additional firefighters. It expired this year, and that reoccurring 1.2 million is what was used to cover that cost of those additional firefighters. Now, it wouldn't be fair to talk about the fire department if we didn't talk about the fleet. We are a mechanized industry and the fleet is the second highest cost on our budget. First, obviously being salaries. But one of the challenges is in a post COVID era, you no longer can order a fire truck or an engine and get it in six months. An engine is now taking three years from point of order and the latter is taking four years. And that's why recently on the agenda you had where we're giving the city manager authority to obligate us to a future purchase of a fire truck because it gets us on the assembly line. Now, what I showed here is in three years, when that fire truck arrives, those are the ages of the current fleet, those four engines that you see, excuse me, five. So when they arrive, we usually don't want to keep a fire truck more than 10 years on the road as a frontline unit. So when they arrive, two of them will be five years old, one will be seven, one eight, and then one will be 10 that will be moving to a reserve fleet because we're replacing with the new one that arrives. As part of our goal to increase our efficiency and deployment, one of the challenges, as you can see, is the cost of maintaining fire trucks. The older the unit, the more expensive. And they no longer make parts, they make them at a premium when you need them. And as you can see, that red bar showing the highest cost is our oldest apparatus. Most recently, that relationship that the scene manager talked about with ESD7, they have agreed to purchase a $1.3 million apparatus fully stocked, fully equipped, so that when our apparatus are going in for service, There's not this long two hour, get all your equipment, put it in an older reserve that may, may not be operating efficiently. We're gonna have a brand new apparatus specifically when they're going for their scheduled maintenance and preventive maintenance. And what that originally does, it eliminates the largest cost to our fleet. It is scheduled to arrive sometime in, I believe, into September, and it will be equipped so that firefighters, all they have to grab is their personal gear, their air packs and their faith pieces, and then go right back in service in that brand new apparatus. This is the kind of deployment strategy that we're starting to see in a lot of modern day fire stations. And this is a way to keep units in service, reduce cost by not keeping apparatus far outside their economic life, and increase the change out so they're readily available. Now, one of the things I'm showing right now, as you can see, our call view has been consistently growing, to include that area of the ESD that I spoke about. We're projected, if we stay on track to make 1,400, excuse me, 14,782 calls, 70% of those calls are EMS. Calls for service, whether it's a motor vehicle accident, a cardiac arrest, a stroke, And one of the goals that we have is to have all of our firefighters from the rank of engineer operator and below. These are the men and women that are actually on the EMS units. We want 80% of them to be trained to the paramedic level. The difference between an EMT and a paramedic. A paramedic can provide cardiac life support, start IVs, give medication, intubate, add defibrillation, interpret EKGs, and give medication to save a life. In our particular system, which is rare, we also carry whole blood for those traumatic events, those motor vehicle accidents that we hear about. And we were able to give whole blood in our system. By giving whole blood, month to month when I track, we almost always, close to 90% of the time, save that life from a traumatic event. And that's why it's important to recognize that we are a big EMS agency. And one of the agenda items that you talk about, excuse me, resource items, is to increase that MIH program. MIH, actually in the past, she's managed to reduce And this is, I just talked to her today, and I'm so proud of her. The first year she came in, she reduced those calls by superutilizers by 71%. The second year, 76%. She says this year, she literally has it down to just one page of superutilizers. And that's why we asked her to give her one assistant. She goes, you give me one person, I will stop all those utilizers that call more than 10 times in a year, which is saving us from having to add a new EMS unit into the system, which would be a million dollar reoccurring cost.

Chief, would you like to introduce her?

That's Ashley. If y'all haven't met her, she's really the rock star. Last year, we won the Texas Municipal League Award for Public Safety Excellence. It was for our MIH program. So at this time, I'll take any questions.

Yeah, thank you very much for the presentation. And you're talking about fire trucks and the lead you have to put in to secure one. I'd like to give kudos to the fire department. Last time we ordered a ladder truck, We got one that was on national rotation or it was a show truck or something.

Oh, we were able to secure one that was basically a stock unit that just somebody canceled the order so we were able to pick it up. It meant 90% of our design. And so that was very fortunate. But we really prefer to be able to schedule the orders so we can standardize the fleet because firefighters have to fill in from different locations. and when they arrive on scene, the last thing you want is when they need to grab a tool, is try to remember which compartment this apparatus have it. So instead, you standardize them, make sure they have the same compartment space and all equipment is standardized in the same place.

Yeah, that's a great idea also. That way speeds up time. Would you like to talk about the air, well before that, there was a discussion yesterday about getting a fire inspector.

actually multiple, I requested four additional fire inspectors. And the reason I requested it, for the last three years I've been asking for one. And as chief, whenever a major incident occurs, first thing you say is, hey, pull the last time we did a fire inspection. And this particular time we had an incident and realized we didn't have an inspection on file and it was concerning to me. So I spoke to our GIS analysts. We looked and we had an issue, probably, years before I got here, where they were migrating to a new database system that kept all our commercial occupancies so that we can track and make sure we have them in a scheduled rotation, depending on the risk. You don't have to inspect everything annually. It depends on the risk. We do have some obligated ones like hospitals, schools. Those can't open unless our inspectors get there. but there's other ones that can be on a three to five year rotation depending on the risk. Well, we realized that not all the information migrated. So after an extensive audit by our GIS department, we discovered that we have 5,260 commercial occupancies to include those areas of ESD that we are contractually obligated to do some level of inspection, again, depending on risk. Unfortunately, right now we have one inspector doing what we call existing inspections because a lot of our inspectors are dedicated doing new construction plan review because all these plans have to be reviewed and returned back to the builder and work with the permitting office so that they can keep everything on time. And what we realized is the average inspector, I did a full workflow analysis, can do about 450 inspections a year. So if I can add four inspectors, I can put the entire 5,260 occupancies on a three-year schedule cycle. We'll touch everything every three years. Now, I've also presented to city leadership an opportunity to scale it if it's necessary. But right now, it is imperative that we make a commitment to adding inspectors to the fire marshal's office so that we can meet those obligations of a life safety inspection.

And they would be non-badged?

No, correct. They would be civilian. So the average firefighter, when you consider that you have to pay for the fire certification, the paramedic, everything that they carry, usually costs us around anywhere from $130,000 to $150,000, what we call loaded. All benefits, everything. Not their salary, but all costs. But if you hire a civilian to do the exact same job, and there's no need to maintain an EMT or fire cert, it's only $80,000, and that's loaded, again, with all their benefits and everything. So we're going to the civilian approach. We have one civilian. He works out of our fire marshal's office alongside with our classified firefighters, and he performs the exact same job and does a very good job, and that's an economic way to provide the same service that is required.

And can you talk about the replacement of the ambulance?

Oh, the chassis?

The box, and why is that such important?

So as you can see, I said the highest call volume, EMS. So the chassis is a commercial chassis. Ford, you can buy different brands. But the miles on there, usually they last anywhere from three to seven years. Well, after you get so many calls, the box itself is still in very good shape. So we basically take the entire box off, replace the chassis with a new chassis. They do a refurb, and it costs you about 60% of the cost of replacing an entire unit. So you can usually do it about three times with a box before all of it has to be replaced. So this is a practice done across the American Fire Service. Usually you try to do one, I mean, or two chassis replacements before you replace the entire box holistically.

All right, thank you. No donations on the request?

No, sir, no donations. Thank you. Councilwoman Shaw.

Is there a designated or a dedicated fire station in Mayfair and or Veramendi?

Not right now. We are actually working right now. We've already identified land close to the middle school. They're doing some environmental checks to make sure that the land's gonna become available and we're working with the ESD board to project and putting in a new fire station. But those negotiations are still ongoing and we're still waiting to see if the land is gonna be viable. I just had a conversation with Mr. Meek, who is on the board of directors with Mayfair, and they said they should be completing sometime soon.

And would that agreement remain in place with still augmenting the money towards New Braunfels for that fire station, or would they become self-contained at that point?

and complete transparency, if we decide to put a new fire station, we're gonna have to have discussions because it's one thing to pay for a fire station and a fire truck, but the reoccurring cost of staff really is the highest cost. So we're gonna have to have a discussion with the ESD board on how we make sure that those are covered by the ESD board.

And is that Veramendi and Mayfair or just Mayfair?

Right now we're only looking at the Mayfair area, but we're already looking at land in Veramendi. We kind of track call volume and growth. We use heat maps. We have a lot. Right now it's Station 7, which is still one of the fastest responding units to that area, but it's also my highest call volume, so they're out of service a lot. So we ran some analysis. Usually what you want to do is when a station hits 60% of the average call volume of all your other fire stations, you start construction because it takes three years to get a fire station. You get land acquisition, a year of design, and then construction. That 30% gives you an opportunity for you to build the station and get it staffed so that by the time you're there, it now meets the average call volumes of all the other stations. It's that buffer zone.

Do you think we'll ever get back to six months to get a fire truck?

You know, there's been a lot of talk, even at the legislature, they've been talking. People have been going down to D.C. trying to push the automakers to say, hey, you have to start thinking about the public safety. Because three years to try to plan, and then you know how budgets are. It's difficult. You never know what's going to happen. And it... It's made it a real challenge, but I'll tell you this. I work with city leadership. We plan our constructions out 10, 15 years out. We know exactly what we need to order so that when they arrive, we're maintaining a good replacement cycle because you don't save money by keeping a fire truck longer. You just trade capital costs and operating costs. Am I gonna buy a new one, or am I gonna repair an old one?

Put a patch.

Yeah.

And a complete side note, I got to participate in your junior fire academy, and that's a phenomenal program, and I'm super excited to have us continue that in the future. So thank you for putting that together.

Well, and if anybody knows firefighter Randy Diaz, I don't want to take credit, because it was his vision, He made it happen. He got the firefighters from training to build the props, and Ashley was there. All the firefighters are excited. I don't take credit at all. It all goes to Randy Diaz. That is his vision.

It was an excellent program, so pass that on. Thank you.

Will do. Councilwoman Carter.

So these fire trucks, forgive my ignorance, is there an aftermarket for, can we sell off the parts to these old pumpers?

Sometimes we'll sell them, and sometimes you get 40 to 70,000, but there's also an opportunity sometimes to donate them to smaller municipalities that are in different socioeconomic status that are really struggling. There's not a huge advantage. I mean, we'll take the 40,000, but when you're talking about a $1.3 million apparatus, it doesn't help that much.

What if you piece it apart and sell the parts? Come on, I'm talking about net gains here.

I appreciate that, but that's not really my arena.

Okay. I just wondered. I didn't know if there was a demand like there are for cars for individual pieces. i don't know it was just thought might get a million dollars on the cumulative supplies yes ma'am my other question result revolves around the inspections have there been fires that have been proven in commercial buildings where there should have been an inspection or it was overdue and just simply from obviously shortages uh it wasn't connected to

There was two incidents where there was commercial fires in the city where I asked to see the inspections and realized the inspection wasn't there. And that's why I asked for the audit. The audit provided us the hard number of 5,260 occupancies, which is where I developed the workflow analysis of why I needed four. INSPECTORS ADDED TO THE SYSTEM, YES. TWO INCIDENTS SPURRED. WHY ISN'T THERE AN INSPECTION? AND GIS DID AN AMAZING AUDIT. AND MY HAT GOES OUT TO NEIL ROSE, IF YOU'VE MET HIM. AND HE LOOKED AT THE APPRAISAL DISTRICT NUMBERS. HE WAS LOOKING AT SO MANY DIFFERENT DATABASE TO COME UP WITH A REALLY GOOD, HE GOES, THIS IS THE NUMBER YOU HAVE. AND AT THE END OF THE DAY, TO REALLY CONFIRM AND GET THAT DATA HYGIENE DONE, WE GOT TO GET BOOTS ON THE GROUND. WE GOT TO START MAKING SOME VISITS TO THESE COMMERCIAL OCCUPANCIES.

Okay, were there injuries in either one of those?

There was one injury, but it wasn't due to the fire. There was a separate situation that occurred there.

Okay, very good, thank you.

I just want to say I support the fact that you need more inspectors on it. The last thing we need is an incident like Florida and some of the other places as we continue to grow is to make sure at least a cycle of every so many years everybody's seeing the inspectors to make sure we're staying. Obviously, we see them on the COs when we're initially starting or that kind of thing. but we have sublets we've got changes that go on that don't necessarily make it to the city so the only time that can be seen is when there are scheduled inspections so i think it's a good good item you're putting forward on that thank you council member go ahead okay you mentioned that fire station seven was at sixty percent already

No, Fire Station 7 is one of my busiest houses right now. What I was saying is that when you're tracking like in the ESD, when is it time to build a new fire station? Usually what you want is once it hits about 60% of the average call volumes of your other fire stations, that's when you start because that 30% growth is your time to land acquisition, design a fire station, and staff it. and order fire engines. As you know, it takes three years to get them. So it gives you a little time. So by the time it's ready, it's now assuming the average of all the other fire stations.

Okay. Well, I'm glad I asked because I was like, oh my God.

Absolutely, Council Member. Go ahead, Sven.

Do you mind talking about the requirements for the airport? You're fully aware of what's required at the airport, is that correct?

To some degree. That's a very niche area of the fire service to have a crash rescue fire department. They have to meet a certain level of index, and it depends on how much fuel and what planes are coming in. To my knowledge, our airport doesn't meet the need for an airport now, but we definitely need to be tracking the growth to see when it's time, because you know, they use different structural gear. They don't use traditional fire gear. They use a lot of foam on those crash rescue apparatus. They also have piercing nozzles because they kind of stand away from them and they pierce the aircraft to be able to expand the foam and to be able to put them out so it's it's a completely different apparatus usually they're made by like oshkosh these really monster apparatus not something i'm overly familiar with i am crash rescue certified but that's a whole other uh area of firefighting but you're tracking with the growth at some point we might need to uh venture into that Yeah, I've spoken to them and said, because you have to track. There's going to be a point where once they hit certain mandates, it's obligated. Now, where I came from in my prior organization, the airport system paid for all the firefighters, the fire stations, even inspectors that were on the airport property.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else?

How you doing, Chief?

We're doing well, Mayor.

I'm actually just kind of curious. It takes three years to make an engine. You know, that's when you want to buy it. Order to deliver. At delivery, right? That's how it is? Yes, Mayor. How many places actually build engines, do you know? Are we looking at just one place?

We use one brand, and there's a reason, and it's a local brand, SIDS, Martin, Pierce, is you don't like to have a mismatched fleet because then you can't keep parts on the shelf, you can't keep technicians trained. They're all very different. Their suspensions are all different. They use different motors, whether it's a Cummins or a PAC car, and then design. And in almost all fire departments, the goal is to buy one brand. One, they also give you better pricing. If they know they're gonna get that reoccurring purchase, they're gonna give you better pricing. But more than anything else, that standardization is better for the technicians that are repairing them and for parts on the shelf.

All right, thanks, that makes sense. The engine number two, I guess we're gonna try to replace that one, right, engine number two? And in three years from then, I'm looking at two other engines. And they're about just 1.5 something million, right?

They're consistently growing. Right now they're 1.3. In two years, they'll be 1.5. Yeah, that... But so that age that you see there, five years, seven years, eight years, and 10, that's the age that will be when the engine arrives in three years. That's right. So that's what two will come out, what two will go into my reserve fleet, but I'm also getting that ESD one. So I might even put that one at the training center and use that brand new apparatus that ESD seven has committed us to so that we can avoid that red escalation cost that you've seen in repairs in our graft.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that you're doing okay. In three years from now, you'll still be okay with the fire engine.

We're right on track, and probably a year or two, I'll be ordering engine five that will be eight years old, so when it arrives, and you have to stay on top of it like that.

Oh, yeah. The inspector things, I'm fully on board for getting more inspectors. That's pretty important. but um anyone else got anything that's that's it thank you very much chief thank you mayor thank you

Good evening, Council. Becca Myers, the Director of Human Resources. I'm here this evening to discuss our human resources specific strategic goals and be stat metrics. We do have our org chart here on the first slide. This encompasses all of the areas of our department. We are a full service HR department. I think it's been mentioned that our HR department services the entire city staff. So they're not centralized to different departments. We have a team of 10 people currently that service the entire city for all of the range of items listed up here on the screen. This first slide is going to cover all of the specific HR objectives and performance measures in the strategic plan. I'm not gonna read these out to you and read the slide, but I just wanted to provide them for reference. Also provided what the status of each of these are. A lot of them are ongoing initiatives, such as attending or hosting eight recruiting events per year or per fiscal year. We do that each year, and so it's ongoing. We do meet that metric, but it's continued. Others are complete. They were a specific item. like presenting the updated benchmark list to city council for approval, that was completed, so we marked it as such. These metrics, just an important note, they're not standalone HR initiatives. These things all work together as an integrated workforce strategy for our human resources team. So what we're focused on is building the systems and opportunities that help us attract the right talent, develop our existing team members, prepare the future workforce needs, and create an environment where people can build their career with the city of New Braunfels. On the succession planning side, which is a large part of what we're focused on here, we have established the framework for the succession plan. We've completed the departmental succession plans and are moving towards integrating succession planning into our regular coaching and evaluation processes. On the recruitment side, this is a continued development effort. We continue to expand on how and where we reach candidates. We want to focus on building stronger candidate pools and positioning the city as an employer of choice. The remaining metrics, which there's a variety here, they're all closely tied to our workforce sustainability. So making sure that our compensation remains competitive is a key metric. Understanding why our team members leave the organization and maintaining our full-time turnover rate at our 15% or lower target. The next two slides are going to take a closer look at our turnover data and our investment in professional development through our NB-STAT measures, two areas that help us understand what our workforce needs are and create opportunities to strengthen our retention and develop our talent internally. So the first slide is gonna be full-time turnover specifically. A lot of our information too, I just wanted to mention, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with our annual people report. So we've done one of these every fiscal year since fiscal year 20. So this is our sixth annual people report. If you guys are interested in team member metrics, This is about 20 page report that's available on the city's website. So we post this publicly on the HR page, and it has a deeper dive into turnover, hiring metrics, kind of a snapshot in time of the fiscal year. So this is the fiscal year 26 data. So this is gonna be more high level, but on our NBSTAT dashboard, we do have part-time regular and part-time turnover as well, as well as overall turnover. And then turnover by department and other metrics. This is just a few things that are captured. And I'm sorry that that graph on the right isn't showing those. I hope you can read that. So turnover, like I mentioned, we do measure all of those different metrics in NBSTAT in our people report. And it is one of the key metrics that we track. The trend for full-time turnover does continue to be positive. Our turnover decreased slightly from fiscal year 24 to fiscal year 25, from 13% to 12.6, as you can see. It remains below that strategic plan target of 15%, which is an outcome two of the strategic plan. That positive trend is continuing in fiscal year 26 and so our turnover year to date which like the slide shows is through July 31st is 7.9% for full time and this time last year in fiscal year 25 through July 31st was 10.32%. So we are trending better than we were last year and showing to end at a lower turnover rate for full time staff. For broader context of kind of how we came to the 15% metric, back in 2020 when we were looking at what we wanted our goal to be, especially post-COVID when we had a higher turnover rate, we looked at metrics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their average turnover rate for public sector employees is around 20%. So we've been utilizing that metric annually. In 2025 for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they reported an average monthly separation rate of 1.5%. So if you annualize that, it's about 18%. So we feel 15% is a good goal. Of course, we want to remain below that. We want to keep trending like this, trending down each year. But it's something that we continue to keep an eye on. Additionally, the reason for separation is obviously something very important that we look at. It gives us additional insight into where we as an organization have opportunities to improve. Compensation and advancement opportunities do remain the leading reason for our separation, as you can see, accounting for 39% in fiscal year 25 and 43% year to date so far in fiscal year 26. This directly relates to our output four which is reducing separations that are citing compensation and advancement opportunities. So we did increase that metric quite a bit from fiscal year 24 to 25 as you can see from 56 to 39. And we're trending slightly upwards but still below that fiscal year 24 measure. Going into our professional development metrics, in the city of New Braunfels, our professional development efforts go beyond your traditional training that you might see or be familiar with in an organization. What we try to do as an HR department is help team members broaden their skills, their knowledge, and their experience, and provide a variety of opportunities that fit different people's interests and needs to grow in the organization. So in fiscal year 24, we provided 126 individual development opportunities for staff around the city. These are available to team members in all departments, and we do try to offer them at various locations. In the people report, there's a list of topics that are provided, trainings, programs that are provided, and we also have a request form for staff that they fill out continuously of what they're looking for that we try to accommodate. Different locations, schedules, and interests. The goal of our programming is truly to allow team members to challenge themselves and learn from each other and gain exposure beyond their day-to-day responsibilities. We get a lot of requests for that. They want to continue to grow. Maybe an opportunity isn't immediately available to them in their department, but they're still wanting to stretch their skills, whether that's presentation skills or knowledge beyond their job that they do at the current time. We also make intentional use of our talent and expertise that we have within the city. In fiscal year 25, as you can see on the right side of that slide, 55% of our professional development opportunities were led by internal trainers. This provides, of course, a cost savings to the city, but it also allows team members to share their own institutional knowledge with others, develop their presentation and leadership skills, and then build connections across departments, which is really important to us. Of course, this creates that two-way benefit, so the team member leading the training grows professionally, while the others that are attending the training also gain that knowledge and perspective from the speaker and learn from their colleagues with that direct organizational experience, which is super valuable. So while the turnover data and separation measures are covered separately than these development metrics, we feel they're tied to each other. We think that Compensation and advancement opportunities being the leading reason for separation just reinforces us to think of ways to assist team members in building their skills, assisting them in demonstrating their capabilities, and especially exploring future opportunities with the city. We've had a lot of traditional and untraditional moves within the city. We have a lot of cool stories. I think we've had people start in the parks department and end up being a police officer or progress all the way up from an intern in their department to a leadership position. Jared has a cool story from going from parks to budget to city manager's office and we have a lot of those stories. We love to tell them because we're very intentional about trying to get people there We offer in our department career coaching if people are interested in progressing to a different role but they don't know where they wanna go. We talk about what skills they currently possess, what they want to possess, how we can get them there, and some opportunities that may fit their interests. So all of those things we feel very strongly tied together. We try to work together to ensure we're developing that talent that we need for the future. And with that, I'll take any questions.

Any questions for her up here? No questions. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I do have one. What does wellness department do within HR? I'm sorry? What is the wellness? On your slide, you had wellness department. What do they do within HR?

Oh, sure. So we have a wellness coordinator, so one person, and she does all of our wellness programming. So it encompasses financial wellness, psychological wellness, and physical wellness. So we do on-site exercise classes. We bring in financial consultants, nutritionists, really all-encompassing areas of employee wellness. We try to provide on-site opportunities for people to, yeah.

Thank you. Anyone else? Nope. Thank you very much. Thank you. Information technology.

Alrighty. Council, thank you so much. Tony Gonzalez, IT Director. As you can see here, here's our org chart. I didn't list out each individual, but these are the different divisions or groups within the IT department. And just our mission statement there is to support the entire city team by providing reliable, effective, and cost-effective technology, right? We're one of those groups that's behind the scenes. We don't interact with a lot of citizens directly, but we help everybody else be more efficient. So a couple of stats I wanted to talk about here. The service desk is really the tip of the spear of IT, right? I mean, they're the ones who everybody calls when things don't work, whether that's hardware, software, printers, whatever it may be. We have had a 17% increase in our requests for assistance. You can see that first chart there on the bottom left, just how that's increased over the last five years or so, which is really pretty expected as our environment continues to grow and complexity and and everything else there. So the great thing though is with our increase in service desk tickets, our customer satisfaction and our service level agreements continue to be really, really high. You can see there we're above 80% on the tickets closed within our service level agreement. I didn't put the chart up there for customer satisfaction, but it remains very, very high in excess of four and a half internally on a scale of one to five. So pretty happy with that. Part of the 17% increase for us is, of course, as city staff grows, we're gonna have more tickets, things like that. But we also tried to this year very purposefully combine any other systems that we had so maybe we had a spreadsheet for our business analyst or maybe GIS was tracking some stuff in other places we consolidated all of that into a single platform this year so we can have better reporting about what our customers are asking and needing help on So a big thing that I want to talk about is cybersecurity. I stood here last year and said that we did not have a lot of huge projects for this fiscal year for IT, and one of the things that we were going to focus on was cybersecurity. That's something that obviously you hear a lot about in the news. It's a big thing, big thing at your companies, where you work, and so forth. So one of the things that we've done this year, and really over the last several years, but we've been very consistent in our messaging keeping our patching program up to date. We do patches every month and we remind people every month when we do that they need to leave their computer on overnight, things like that. And so we've had a really, really good response to that. Over the last couple of years in. So as a part of that messaging in addition to keep everything up to date we use our cyber security vendor. And you all get those emails once a month as well where you know quote unquote we try to trick you it's not really us it's actually our cyber security vendor but every employee gets that those test emails every month so it's just a constant reinforcement. of the training and of what we teach them. And so as a part of that, what you can see on this graph on the bottom, that single black line right there is the industry average for municipal governments across all of Know Before's customer base. And so for the first time in this last year, for all 12 months in a year, we were below that number. When I got here almost eight years ago, we couldn't even see that number. We were so far above it. So we have done a really, really excellent job, in my opinion, of bringing that down. And that's a big kudos to, sure, I'm gonna promote my team, but also all of the teams that you see behind us, because those folks have to listen to the training and put that into practice. And so it's been a real focus for the last several years, and you can see some really, really good results there. One of the things I want to highlight is the last bullet there under cybersecurity. You just recently approved a no-cost agreement with the University of Texas, what they call a regional security operations center. It's a really incredible deal. It's one of those ones that it sounds too good to be true, but it really is. UT is using this regional operations center to educate their students that are going to school for cybersecurity. So it's ultimately going to increase the workforce out there. But the way they're doing that is they're paying these license fees and letting any local municipal, a county, quasi-government agency in the city of Texas sign up for these cybersecurity services. It's things that I don't have to put in my budget resource request, or it's additional tools that I get to add. And so we're doing that. We're in the process right now of implementing some of those tools. And it's just another layer to add to the tools that we already have for cybersecurity. So, you know, I can't really remember an opportunity where I've been able to do that at no cost. So pretty nice agreement there. We're looking forward to that. And then on the right, apologies to everybody else, but they'll say they had the best interns, but we had the goat of interns, okay? We had the Michael Jordan of interns. Her name was Krystalyn. I really want to thank HR and city management for implementing our intern program. We have used it extensively. We had a GIS intern who was great, but we had a cybersecurity intern this year, and she was amazing. She helped us with so many things that we just didn't have time to get to as a team Cybersecurity is shared across everybody in the IT department, in addition to all of our customers. But you can see some of the stats up there that she did. She did some amazing work for us. Wish that we had a way to keep her, but life happens. She had to move back to Dallas anyway, so even if I had a position, I couldn't have kept her. But we're certainly looking forward to another intern this year and being able to show them what she did and say, this is our expectation of you, even as an intern. So we're looking, I could have used Tom Brady, but I'm not a Brady fan. So we use the Michael Jordan of interns. All right, the other thing last year at this point that I told you about was that we were coming up on a network refresh. We have had a plan over the last several years where we replace the majority of our network every five to six years, and it was time to do that. What we did this last year was we actually Extended the warranty for all of those components for a year so that we kind of kicked that project down the road Which is not a real big risk there as long as we buy the warranty for those items That's a very acceptable level of risk So in the planning of that what has happened is that we really looked at the cost for this and how you know that's a huge capital expenditure every five to six years and And that can get very, very hard to find in the budget, as you see with all of the competing interest, right? But then if you kick it down the road a year or two, it becomes an absolute must-have. But you don't know what else might be coming up in that year, and now all of a sudden I'm competing with chief for a fire engine. That's not a situation I want to be in. City management doesn't want to be there. Chief's going to win that battle over me. He's bigger than I am. He's much more fit. So we're not drawing swords over that, right? But so one of the things that we did this year was we worked with Jared and my management team, and we basically have completely shifted our plan here. So we're moving our network refresh project to doing 20% a year, to doing planned replacements. That's gonna help greatly with forecasting, right? We don't have the big, huge capital expense. It just is gonna be a much better way to refresh our network. And quite honestly, it also helps my team because every five or six years, they have this nightmare of a year. They've got to keep everything up and running, but then they've got to go replace 80% of the network, right? That's a year they don't look forward to, okay? It's not a whole lot of fun. So this way, it's much easier on them, and they know what their workload is going to be year to year, month to month, right? So that's what we've done this year. The cost that's up there, that two and a half million, just by the way, that's only a portion of, in the next line when we say we have 350 components, that two and a half million wouldn't replace all 350 components. It would just replace the core pieces of our network. So if we replaced everything, it would be way in excess of that two and a half million dollars. We think spreading this out and only doing the core things, replacing other things as they fail or as technology requires, right? That's what we're doing there. So you see some of the benefits that I've already talked about and so forth. So that's our plan for our network refresh. And happy to answer any questions before we get to library.

Anybody have questions from up here?

Yes, I'll go.

Go ahead.

So with your explanation, if you go back a couple of slides, the Michael Jordan slide, yes. So with this program that you have and the new program that's gonna start with Texas State hasn't started yet, do you think we need a security administrator?

It's a tough question, sir. I know you want one. I want one, yes. You know, I'm never going to be satisfied with where we are in cybersecurity. There is always more that we could do. There's no doubt about that. Maybe the best way I can answer that is I lose less sleep these days over cybersecurity than I did two years ago. We're in a much better place. Are we where I want us to be? No. I mean, you know.

Okay, that's good. Thank you.

Any further discussion? Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor French, Mayor Pro Tem Capizzi, council members. I'm Cole Johnson, library director, and thank you for the time to talk a little bit about the library as planned over the next couple years. For organizational chart, the library is comprised of our main library and the west side library, and what we call our collection services, who orders all of our books and all of our electronic resources and gets them on the shelf. They also run our Library Express, which is our bookmobile and goes out and does programming and delivers books to the community. And we have our librarians who do primarily programming and work on the desk and serve the public. All right, so our big goal over the next five years is to increase our digital circulation by 50%. Looking at the library, the print circulation is good. It doesn't have a huge amount of room to bloom. But we do see that we are under-invested in our e-books. So over the next five years, we're going to focus on building our e-book collections and increasing digital circulation. Right now, we're about 23% of our total circulation is e-books, and we want to get it up to 35%. Anywhere 30 to 40 is the standard for public libraries, so we want to hit 35%. And we're going to achieve this by growing digital circulation by 10% annually. And that's the feedback we get from our patrons, is that it takes a long time for a hole to be filled. There's not the collection they expect. And so in order to grow that, in order to appeal to new users and to encourage digital adoption, we need to build that collection. Over the last year, we have seen digital circulation increase from an average of 6,000. It was very steady. Over the last few months, it's gone to 8,000. That's because we put some extra funds to it. So we've already seen the result of putting more money into our e-books. The demand is strong, and our outreach strategy focuses on promoting the e-library. So when we go out into the community, we're in our Library Express, we talk to you about the library. If you sign up for a card, you can start using our e-books immediately. And why is this so important? Not everyone is near a branch, and this is a way we can get people, you know, tap into our services. These are also people who may not want to come to a branch, may not be able to come when we're open. So that's where we see the most growth. That's our five-year goal over the next five years is to get that circulation, to get that collection where it needs to be. Second one is ongoing. It's reimagining our library spaces, providing new experiences. So this is ongoing, but we'll be able to report back on what we do because we're going to see through some projects related to this. So just like any retail store, they move things around. They change it up. It can't be the same thing all the time. We want to focus on showcasing things that people may not know about. We also want to incorporate our digital library into the branches more, making it more visible and making how to use it more visible, kind of like the Apple Genius Bar where you can interact with things, become aware of them. Another huge part is partnering with Parks and Rec to develop amenities like playgrounds, trails, and outdoor seating areas to create more varied opportunities for site usage. So in a lot of ways, not just our library, but many libraries are transactional. You come in and you pick up your hold, you leave, you go to a storytime, you leave. But if you include things like playgrounds, if you include maybe some light exercise equipment, some nice seating, that will encourage longer uses of the library. Kind of I imagine the multi-generational use where grandma comes in with the kids, sits on the porch, watches them play, reads her book. They go to a program, spend more time there. And we know there's a demand for this, because if we look at the community questionnaire that came out on December 26 and 25, 79% of residents want more passive recreational spaces. And I think that's definitely a key to libraries' resiliency, is to make them something more than what they had been in the past, a repository. to a place where you want to spend time. Additionally, we want to support the arts. So calling back to the New Braunfels Arts and Culture Master Plan, we've always been a place where there's been cultural events happening, but we focused on creating public art spaces. So the Walnut Branch will feature local art in the lobby, and we've really been talking about that as having a showcase. And if I'm just going to talk about some of the projects we've done, we did the quiet room at the main library with the support of our foundation. They funded that. And what we did was we enclosed an area so that people can go in and spend quiet time to do longer study periods. The library is not a quiet place anymore because it's an active space. So we created a quiet space. It's very well used, comfortable seating, laptop seating. You can charge up. a fireplace that doesn't have heat, which is good. But it's a nice ambiance. So we will be putting these concepts in as we design the walnut branch. It's going to have a playground. It's going to have a real focus on making awareness of the digital collections. And it's going to have shared spaces, what we call shared spaces, which are our study rooms which are really open we've opened them up since i got here to the small business community so it's no longer limited and we've gotten really good feedback from that as well those are two goals one is a five year one is ongoing and then i would like to just highlight this one report from nbstat which is our nbpl app launches if you don't have our app check it out uh we got it back in october 24 and you can see that it's grown very strongly over over over the last two years um so not only can you connect to your account you can manage your account place holds for new things book is shared space explore our event calendar connect to our digital collections you can also check out a book with your phone which i think is a really cool thing uses rfid technology so you can come in place your book on it So we're always looking to how we can integrate new technology to appeal to new users. And that's all I have for you. Any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Any questions from up here? Go ahead, Councilman Winshaw.

When you talk about the digital library, how do you determine how many copies of a specific book you're going to get? And do you buy those or do you rent those so if there's not a big circulation, you can return them?

It's a complicated model. So the publishers have it figured out. So I'll give you the example of Stephen King. You can't buy his books. You can buy a license for his books. And you get 100 downloads and it disappears. But we have a very strong department. They evaluate it. Let's say with the new release, we'll probably buy two perpetual copies. It's called one user, one book. And that stays with us. And then we can buy some licenses to meet those holds. And that's OK, because they'll fall off. And by the time they fall off, there's not going to be the demand anymore. There's also cost per circulation, so we can turn it on and say if we think we're going to get less than 100, we might say we're going to pay $2 or $3 per circulation and clear our holds in that way.

And that's digital, like reading books and audio books?

It's both, and what we're finding is huge demand for audio. I think it's commuting, people want to do that, so that's what we're going to focus on is a lot of audio.

And then manual books, when they get rented and returned late, do you guys no longer do late fees?

We no longer do late fees. It's been a couple years before I got here. And that's been a trend among libraries to get rid of those. We still charge if you damage a book. If you don't return it, you do get charged for that.

Thank you for your presentation.

You're welcome. Councilwoman Carter.

Are there any, and you might have covered this and I heard you say the word foundation. Are there any private funds? Can you self-sustain or are you city funded?

Well, the city funds a lot of what we do. And so what I like, they fund for all of our facilities, maintenance, our landscaping, the books that we buy, the digital resources that we buy, the software packages that we buy. What we use are other sources of funding, which is our Friends of the Library. They give us a big amount of money every year. Last year, I believe they gave us $110,000, and that goes only to programming. It goes to special initiatives like Books for Babies, where every baby that's born in New Braunfels gets a welcome package and some books. And we also have the New Braunfels Public Library Foundation. And their stated goal is to help us out with our bigger projects, like our Library Express, and the bookmobile before that. So they do help us with things like that. They funded our quiet room as well. And we looked at them to do the things that are kind of bigger than what the city provides. But yeah, those are our two, and that's the public supporting us through volunteer work. The Friends of the Library, they run the big annual book sale. They run the bookstore at our main library. And then, of course, the foundation, their big thing is the book and author event that happens every year, where we bring in authors and sell their books. And that's been a huge source of revenue for us.

Okay. what about employment development i didn't hear you mention that to me libraries today are very different than they were when i was a kid and we should be trying to broaden the scope the reach i want to make sure usage is supporting those buildings because they're multi-million dollar facilities i've not heard of a playground at a library but you know you're the expert What about retraining? Do you have those initiatives of adults?

Are you talking about staff or public? For staff particularly, right?

No, no, she's referring to programming. No, the public.

Oh, for programming, what kind of training do we do? We partner with like Texas Workforce Commission. They come out and they bring their bus out and they do workforce programming with us. We do things like our intro to AI is a class we do. So we're always doing technology programming. We have our device advice where you can come in with your laptop and pretty much anything goes. Like, hey, I want to learn how to use ChatGPT. We'll sit down and show you how to use it.

But for those that are in our community that are laid off for whatever reason and they're trying to get a new job and they may be laborers, they may be blue collar workers that have never touched a computer before. Do you have any workforce training structured to assist those folks?

Pretty much it's on demand. So that's something we do daily. Someone comes in and says, hey, I'm applying for a job, whatever it is. We'll sit down with them. Usually we try to put them in that device advice class, because we can sit with them for like an hour, walk you through, hey, I want to apply at HomeBeep. Everything's online. So even if you don't know how to use a computer, We'll help you get your resume together. We'll help you through the application process. Naomi Jader at the west side, the assistant manager, she does a lot of programming like that with adults that are looking for workforce improvement. So that's something that she's focusing on.

Okay. And you've got a lot of staff in comparison as I look at FTE.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me what's in a normal library. What do you have 10 people per library for, as an example?

I think that there's been a lot of changes since I came here, so I will say that I've reconfigured the library so people are doing more time on the front desk, less time. I've centralized a lot of things, so the collection development has been centralized, so that's really, we're really knocking that out and staying on top of it, and it's a really regimented process. And then our, I would say our frontline staff, they're expected to do, you know, six to seven hours public service every day, and that includes working on the desk and then doing programming. And then they have like an hour or two to plan, respond to emails. But we will, as we open the Walnut Branch, that's when I think we can, Really, I am involved, I'm doing a staffing study right now to arrive at the staff we will need at the Walnut. And I think what we'll see is we'll probably, some people may move to the Walnut branch. And so I agree, there is, from the outside it looks like maybe there's a lot of staff, but I think everything's falling into place as we expand.

So I gotta correct myself. So you've got how many people?

It's about 30.

30, okay. So you really have 15 people per operation.

Not exactly. So the west side, because of the constraints of the building, can't really house a full staff. So we did make an effort. One thing that I did when I arrived was implement, from the many libraries I worked at, a branch services model. So they have a branch manager, they have an assistant branch manager, and they have a children's librarian. That's the baseline. So it's expected that your branch manager obviously oversees operations, goes out and does outreach, is on the desk less than everybody, but half the day they're probably on the desk. Assistant manager backs them up, does adult programming, and then the children librarian, that's kind of all they do. They go to schools, they're going to daycare centers, they're planning a lot of programming, and then we backfill that with our library assistants. So I would say the west side really has about four or five dedicated staff, and then we kind of just send people back and forth. Because the size of the building, if you'd like to take a tour of it, it really only houses about three or four.

Yeah. That's why I didn't know where all these staff are. So I guess they're at the other location. So you got 26 there, four out on the west side.

That's correct.

Roughly. I mean, they're somewhere, right?

That's correct.

They're not working at home, are they?

No one works from home. Okay. Yeah. As far as my, you know, the city, you can work a day from home, but as far as library goes for public service, you have to be on the building.

And you said something about volunteer hours. So we're not counting FTE as the volunteers, right? These are paid staff?

These are paid staff, that's right. And many of them are in the collection services department. So all day long, they're opening the boxes, putting the books on the shelf. They're getting in the... The van, they're doing deliveries. So I would say, I don't have it in front of me, but I would say if you were to look at brand services and collection services, it's about half and half distributed in that way.

Okay, and then you have volunteers as well for public service? Did I hear you correctly?

They do not do public service because they can't interact with our systems for confidentiality, accessing patron records, and also they're not trained in the way they need to be. So they shelve, they support us in other ways. They may apply Mylar to the books, wrap them up, get them ready to go, box things that are ready to go to the book sale. And then our friends at the library, they are our... Our organized volunteer unit, they operate the bookstore. All the donations that come in, they're processing them, they're selling them online, they're selling them in the bookstore. So that's kind of what they do.

The volunteer staff?

The volunteers, exactly.

Okay, very good. All right, thank you.

Yes, libraries definitely, we love our volunteers and we leverage them a lot.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any more questions? All right, thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Christopher Looney, Neighborhood and Community Planning. This is our org chart up here on the screen. We're broken into three divisions, Planning and Historic Preservation. Our team members work on long range planning, rezoning requests, subdivision planning requests, historic preservation operations, compliance services, that's our code enforcement team, and neighborhood services, there's two teams within them, that's our health and food safety folks, they inspect restaurants and other food service establishments, and animal welfare and rescue, these are our animal control officers. We also administer four boards and commissions now, Board of Adjustment, the Planning Commission, Historic Landmark Commission, and the Animal Services Advisory Board. So going into some of our goals, looking forward for the next few years, wanted to mention a few of these. We periodically receive inquiries about unkept structures, and then we learn through the process that many of them are abandoned. for one reason or another. And so we plan to establish a registration program for those structures so that city staff can more easily identify the owners. And then we can follow up with those owners, stay on top of them to ensure the structures are safe, secure, and they remain unsightly. All of that, of course, in accordance with the ordinances city council has adopted. Another one of our goals, the adoption of the land development ordinance or the LDO. It's currently going through its final stage of suggestions and edits from both the focus group and the citizens advisory committee that's been appointed by city council. We'll have another round of public meetings and input followed by commencement of the adoption process this coming fiscal year. On the comprehensive plan update, our charter does require the routine update of the required comprehensive plan. Our comprehensive plan is called Envision New Braunfels. This is the overarching long range plan for the entire community, not just the city. We are in the middle of that public process and we look to bring the update to city council in the coming fiscal year. In fact, I'll be bringing a bigger update on the process to an upcoming city council meeting to keep you updated on where we are there. Back on the LDO, after adoption of the LDO itself, one of the things that we'll do is develop a detailed manual with color images and graphics that can serve as an easy reference tool to assist our property owners with the landscaping and tree preservation ordinance. We thought that might be helpful with adoption of a much enhanced landscaping and tree preservation ordinance. Of course, if adopted by city council this next year. New Braunfels currently has four historic districts. All four of these historic districts follow the same general criteria that's outlined in the Federal Department of the Interior guidelines, but each district does have its own character. So, following adoption of the LDO, we wanna work with the residents and the property owners within each of those districts and collaboratively develop some guidelines for those districts that are unique to each one of them. Of course, if those property owners desire that. Something that I've always found interesting considering the history of our community is that New Braunfels didn't even have historic preservation ordinance districts or landmarks until the late 1990s. A community-wide historic preservation plan would actually help us learn from our current residents what they specifically desire for preserving historic and culturally significant assets here in our community. And that can also help us be better informed when we're adopting future related historic preservation ordinances and policies. Another plan that we would like to work on as New Braunfels has matured as a community, residents have actually been demanding increased code enforcement services. And so we would like to work with our residents to identify and document what are their specific goals for code enforcement. And we can do that through a code compliance strategic plan. If we have their goals documented in this plan, then they can help us identify the right tools to employ and help us better plan for and prioritize how we proceed with code compliance in the future. And then finally, in terms of long-term goals, before IH35 was carved through this area, Elliott Knox Boulevard actually served as part of the highway between San Antonio and Austin. And like we've probably seen in many of our American communities, remnants of these highways, they continue within the community and they serve like Elliott Knox does, but more of a utilitarian function, often results in some disinvestment along the way. There are some planned TxDOT improvements at the intersection of Spur Street and IH 35. There's the future extension on the north side of Elliott Knox to the other side of IH 35. The city does have a grant application in to fund a multimodal corridor study for Elliott Knox, and our comprehensive plan has actually recognized this roadway as a significant community asset, and it really is worthy of renewed investment. So one of our longer-term goals is to work with our residents on a long-range plan that would identify community-driven improvements for Elliott Knox. So jumping over into NBSTAT, we pulled a few of the graphs that might be of interest to City Council. Of course, as you know, What we put in NBSTAT is not the entirety of our metrics, but it's the ones that historically city council has been very interested in, has maybe called us about or asked questions about more often than others. So we've put a few here on the screen for you as the other departments did. One of those is subdivision platting. So platting, this is the laying out of lots and blocks, those imaginary lines on the ground that delineate where people's property lines are. That's really one of the earliest steps that developers sometimes need to take to prepare land for development. But because land does not always need to be platted, and also because land can be platted many, many, many years before actual development, subdivision planning is not necessarily a perfect indicator of future development. It can provide some information on how many lots exist in the community and what land is already prepped for future development, and that can help inform our build-out analyses that we've shared with City Council before. Jumping over to something completely different, one of the other items that city council often asks about is banded signs. Banded signs, these are the signs that people put out kind of on the side of the road, in the right of way, illegally advertising their business or some other things they may be advertising. Our ordinance, like many, many other cities' ordinances, classifies these types of signs as refuse. And so to improve the attractiveness of our community, our co-compliance team picks them up when we see them, when we're out responding to their calls, or sometimes even we'll get calls specifically about the bandit signs, and we'll have to go and pick those up. There also has been kind of a rash of home builder bandit signs. You may have seen many of these. They typically pop up over the weekend, and then they go away by Monday. So a few months ago, we started a program where code compliance goes out on Saturdays and picks up home builder bandit signs. We kind of target the hot spots. You can probably think of them in your minds where those are. You've probably seen lots of them. And we pick those up on Saturdays. And we are starting to see fewer of those signs. We believe that is a result of the efforts that we made, particularly on those Saturdays. Finally, one of the glamorous duties of our animal welfare and rescue officers is to pick up dead animals on our roadways and on private property. Obviously here in New Braunfels dead deer is a big ticket item. So because of that we broke that out on this graph so that we can see the total number of dead animals we pick up but then also out of those how many were dead deer. The deer numbers, just so you're aware, those do tend to fluctuate, and then kind of, they're cyclical throughout the year, and that depends on the time of year when the deer are more actively moving across the community. Again, not everything we do, but just a sprinkling of some of those things and some of those graphs on NBSTAT, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Go ahead, Mayor Podem.

I think it was on page 42 where the code compliance strategic plan, yeah.

Yes, sir.

Has that already started or it's not underway yet? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Sure. These are actually all goals that, well, not all of them. I guess the ones before that, the LDO and comp plan update are already started. But for the vast majority of these, these are goals that we'd like to proceed with in the coming years. And so by fiscal year 28 or within fiscal year 28, it's something we would like to do. So New Braunfels- had its first dedicated code enforcement team beginning in the 1990s. Before that, I think I was told that maybe the fire department or maybe it was the police department assisted New Braunfels prior to creation of an actual code enforcement staff. And that has been growing since the 1990s. We now have a team of five. And we respond to calls as they come in from concerned citizens. Typically, it's a concerned neighbor about something they've seen. They believe that perhaps their neighbor is not complying with the ordinances that are adopted and we can send the team out. But there have been periodic instances where we've been asked, does co-compliance patrol the city? That is not something that we do today. We are compliance driven and of course our goal is not to be punitive and to immediately issue notices of violation or immediately file in court. Our goal is to help folks bring their property into compliance and assist them in any way we can. So we're education focused first. Is that what our citizens would like overall from code compliance? That's the way we've been operating for 25, 30 years. Or would they like to see something different? And the way we can arrive at that is to develop a plan by working with the public, having a public engagement with them, learning a little bit more about what they would like to see from our team, bringing that forward to city council. If city council concurs and agrees, adopting that plan, and that can help us determine future budgets for co-compliance, future tools, and so forth.

Yeah, I think, and I like that, and I appreciate it too, and I appreciate the fact that we try not to be punitive in those sorts of things too. Yes, sir. As we explore that, what I would like to see is more of a way to, I guess, get results. It seems like in our current system and structure, serve notices, good court or they may not go to court, municipal court. Fines that they may or may not pay. and the house or residents still just seems to kind of remain in the same conditions that they're in. It just seems to kind of be a perpetual chasing of our tail. I don't know if there's just, if there are ways or if there's, maybe there's some state law roadblocks on that, I don't know. That's something I'd like to see explored a little bit more to where we could get to a resolution sooner, because I've been dealing with a number of complaints in District Two from different folks, so I know Jordan is aware of exactly what I'm talking about, so it just seems difficult, and we've worked together pretty closely on trying to resolve these things, but it just, I don't think there's a whole lot of teeth for us to work with. And like I said, that may be a state law thing, I don't know, but I would love to see this include some of those measures in there.

Excellent, thank you, sir.

Councilwoman Carter.

How many staff members are in code compliance?

Five.

Five?

Yes, ma'am.

How many ordinances do the staff proactively manage?

I would have to open up our Code of Ordinances and count those for you, Councilmember.

I mean, do they go out? I think you said they don't. They don't go out and drive the city?

It's not a proactive in that way where we have time, I guess you could say, to drive and search for violations. If we are called, let's say as an example, my neighbor has tall grass that exceeds the ordinance adopted by city council, and so when a co-compliance team member responds, and they go out and identify that okay, that grass is taller than it's supposed to be, if there's another house on that block, two or three houses on that block with a similar situation, then we'll also provide them a notice as well. That can be considered kind of quasi-proactive. It's more out of fairness, so that way if someone receives a notice but they recognize that their neighbor has the same violation, then there is an inconsistency in enforcement of the ordinance.

I have a very strong stance on ordinances and enforcement. If you have an ordinance, it's there to be enforced. Otherwise, don't have an ordinance.

That's just the way it is. Sounds like a great philosophy.

Because in my view, calling, because I know I can dime my neighbor out or whatever, that should be proportionately applied across the city. And if we're only reacting, to me that's reason to potentially be in a class action lawsuit because we're not applying our ordinances equitably. And it also has our city in a bit of disarray. I personally know of backyards with feet of trash, weeds, and that kind of stuff. So I really think we need to step it up in this area. You can drive down the interstate and just see kind of train wrecks all along that interstate, let alone driving through neighborhoods. So I realize you're in tremendous staff restrictions, but we're not doing enough in this area. And to me, it's a revenue source as well. Thank you. So if you can get me some numbers on this proactive versus reactive, and by reactive, I consider a phone call from the neighbor, that's a reactive enforcement of an ordinance. I wanna know how many, if it's zero, it's zero, do we go out and actively enforce and that we actually get a result, and then the reactive where neighbors are calling, right? Yes ma'am. Or whomever?

Certainly.

And I also wanna know the same about the citations. So actual where in the citation numbers, how many we've issued, what's the revenue? And it's probably on your dashboard. I mean, I gotta be honest, I did not look at it and I should. So if it's there, just tell me it's there. If I'm asking for something that is unique, if you could just give me a, and you don't have to rush, I just need it. in a couple weeks or whatever. And also do you use drones at all?

No.

Have you ever considered that for enforcement? That you could fly the city pretty fast in a drone?

Council Member Carter, I believe the kind of violations they enforce wouldn't be eligible. I can check into that, but I don't believe they could.

I'm just curious. Because I've seen some cities have gone to drone usage for code enforcement. Now, I can't tell you for sure that that's, I've just read on some of that, because I happen to manage as a HOA president, and I've often wanted to do that in my own neighborhood. I don't have time to wrote it right now.

I'll look into that. The state does have a separate statute that governs the drones, and I just haven't looked at it in a while.

Okay, wonderful.

I'll get back with you.

It might be helpful. It might not. I don't want to get us in trouble. I'm just trying to explore better ways to do business.

Yeah, there could be some issues with perception as to why we're flying a drone to look into someone's backyard. And so I think that that's probably a huge liability for us and maybe expose us to a lot of criticism.

Fly the street path. I don't know anything about drones either. I'm just the wizard of ideas.

The way they reacted about flock, I'm pretty sure drones would really turn the city upside down.

Council Member Carter, I'll just add a little bit to that. Everybody's wanting to talk.

In general, our code compliance officers enforce from what they can view from the right of way. So even when we're talking about items that are in an individual's backyard, that is a difficult thing for us to enforce. Sometimes if the next door neighbor will allow us to view that property, that is one way that we can enforce, but we are restricted on what we can do. As far as proactive code compliance is concerned, the chart that Mr. Looney Illustrated with the bandit signs that is an example of proactive enforcement. So whenever we're out and and most of our crews are When they are out, if they see bandit signs, they will pick those up. But that is an example of proactive code enforcement that we do. In addition, when we have habitual offenders, when we have individuals that we have to continue to go out there, I'm actually working with Council Member Shaw on one of those right now. Those are, we go out there proactively and we'll monitor those on a regular basis. But it is a very, very small staff for 45 square miles.

Definitely so, and I understand that. But again, if you're not gonna enforce an ordinance, why have it? I mean, I'll just be honest about that. And we need to consider that, because if we're not gonna enforce them, we need to get them off the books. Because if they're on the books, somebody could elect to misuse them and target people, and we can't do that. And I do believe that there's reasons to inspect backyards, is that correct, for health violations potentially? Where there's bugs, there's snakes, there's all kinds of things that endanger other people, is that correct? So we do get there. That comes up periodically, yes ma'am. So we need to really visit with our policies on ordinances. Like I said, either get them off the books or let's get busy enforcing. And I appreciate you looking into the drones for any level of use. Thank you.

Councilwoman Shaw. Sorry.

Where do citizens find the list of ordinance for the city? Like I think sometimes they just don't know what they don't know and they don't know they're in violation. So is there a link? Is it on the city page? So they can just go and find the ordinance for the city.

Thank you very much. Actually, we get so many calls. And not just my department, but city employees all over asking, what is the rule for this or that? And And we all go to the same place. So the city of New Braunfels publishes our code of ordinances on Municipal Code Corporation website, Municode for short, municode.com. And so anybody who's watching or listening tonight, municode.com. And they can search for all the cities across America that use that as their publisher. And all of our ordinances are published there. And then as city council amends or adopts new ordinances, we work to publish and update there as well.

Would it be possible to grab that link and put it on our social media just as a quick link for people who get their information off of social media? Maybe?

You bet. We can certainly blast it out there just to remind people what's available out there, sure.

And then we can all share that around and then people have an idea what they're doing. And then do you afflict fines on bandit signs?

There is presently in our ordinance not a specific penalty provision for the bandit signs. It's kind of a unique ordinance here in New Braunfels because it's just, they're classified as trash. And so as trash, we can pick them up and throw them away. However, we have used kind of a general penalty provision to go in. If there is somebody that we can actually track down, like there'll be a legitimate business with a real phone number on the bandit sign and they have 20 of them put up, then we will reach out to them and make sure they're aware that it is not legal. But the vast majority of a lot of what we see out there are kind of the fly-by-night, the ones that are just coming through town, trimming trees, flipping houses, whatever they may be advertising, and they'll use burner phones and other phone numbers and make it difficult for us to track down. There has been at least one business in town where we did send them a notice of violation that led to it going to court. And there's probably another one that we could do that to as well. It has to do a lot with kind of being able to identify exactly what business it is that's doing it.

Okay. Thank you for all you do. Appreciate you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Councilman Spradley.

I'd like to just clarify, code enforcement is not the only entity in the city that enforces ordinances. That's correct. The police department does as well, right? Yes, sir. That's correct.

Park rangers.

Animal welfare officers.

Animal welfare, yeah.

And with regards to enforcing ordinances, if you look at the performance measures in the budget book, For code enforcement, they actually reviewed nearly 2,700 cases, or we estimate that they'll review about 2,700 cases this year, and each one of those is a potential violation of an ordinance. So we are enforcing the ordinances when either we drive by or we're made aware of these issues.

Many of these and some of these were in the old days under health and safety. Okay, so if the grass is tall and there's rats and other things and congested areas, a health department and that kind of thing. Hopefully the LDO is going to clear up some of the places where we have difficulty. For example, on Green Road, there was a parcel of land that was about 20 acres, and we have a tree ordinance, and we also have an ordinance that says I've got to mow X number of feet back, X number of feet off the line, which would have caused clear cutting in order to achieve that. And so how we apply it, how the LDO relays to this on the ordinances. I think the second thing, we've reduced a few ordinances and if we can continue to do that of things that we as a government shouldn't be legislating because it's, People activities, sometimes we legislate in our ordinances to the smallest denominator or violator possible. Somebody stepped on the grass, therefore we pass an ordinance not to step on the grass. The other is, I think, Councilman, Councilmember Carter mentioned equal enforcement. I'm of the viewpoint, if we're not gonna enforce it, and we aren't mandated by the state, it ought to go away. I mean, that's a choice. There's things that have been passed by the state does. We have it on the books, but it's just not worth the effort or the time or the money to enforce it. Just get it out where we can go down the line and calm it down. LDO is due out in 27 when?

We're working with the focus group right now to receive their input and feedback so we continue to make additional adjustments. Then when that's completed, I'm gonna say hopefully by the end of the calendar year, then we can go out to the broader public and get their general feedback, which could allow for us to start bringing it forward in chunks and in pieces to the Planning Commission and City Council and Historic Landmark Commission and other boards and commissions beginning in the spring.

All right.

Any further questions?

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry.

Honorable Mayor and Council, Ken Wilson, Director of Parks and Recreation. This evening, I'm going to go over our goals and talk about some of our matrix. As you can see, there's six functional areas within the department. The department has 163.75 and then 127 seasonal employees, and then the golf course has 21. Just because of the nature of our business, the vast majority of our employees are either part-time regular, part-time, or seasonal employees. And so they, you get .5 for part-time employees and things like that. Our goals for this year is to modify the maintenance plan for Zipp Family Sports Complex. As you know, we just opened it up. We did the maintenance portion of the plan, and now we're working on the operational plan. As we bring everything online, we've just started our tournament operations out there. This weekend we'll have 102 teams flag football for adults and 32 youth teams. So it's a great impact to the overall community as we go forward. We're also starting our interlocal league agreements with Little League and we started a new lacrosse program this year. Soccer and baseball, softball will all start this year out at Zip. So pretty excited to see those things go. as well as we want to develop an operation and maintenance plan for Mission Hill. That is the request in our budget this year for those three part-time regular employees that will manage and take care of those facilities for evening, weekend, weekday rentals throughout that, keeping that clean, and then our park operation maintenance plan. We won't get any additional employees, but we will work to become more efficient and maintain those areas with the staff that we currently have. Another goal is to initiate a design for Alvis Lane with park development funds. It is in Pequod II in the next fiscal year. Alvis Lane has been a vacant property for quite some time. And Pequod II is an area that has less park land available in relation to the rest of the quads for the city. We want to continue. park improvements by using park development funds. Jeff and I's goal throughout the next few years is to take care of what we have. And so those park development funds, we wanna make sure that we go throughout the city and make improvements in our parks. Currently we're working on Haymarket Park where we'll do improvements for a a new shelter out there, a new backstop, and work on the playground surfacing there. We've done some improvements at Hoffman Park where we redid some playground surfacing there. We're working at Jesse Garcia, installing new fence, a pavilion, and a concrete slab out at those areas. We're also working in County Line Memorial Trail addressing some of the issues with ADA requirements and which falls in line with our ADA transition plan. So a lot of things going on and we appreciate all your support throughout the years. Update parkland dedication and development ordinance. As a requirement of that ordinance, it's our job to update those ordinances periodically and and we plan to do that in the next year. Just to give you some background on park development funds, the new development drives new demand for services in existing parks, and so we wanna make sure that everybody is paying their fair share, and park development fees allow that. These fees are calculated based on population, current level of service, cost of land and construction, and it applies to residential development within the city's ETJ, except for ETJ that is in Guadalupe County. The fees that you see for land acquisition and park development for neighborhood and community parks, when the council did this adoption in 2018, they chose to do neighborhood and community parks only. They did do regional parks, but they set the rate at zero dollars. So there'd be some opportunity to improve regional parks if there was a fee added to regional parks. And those parks would be Atlanta Park, Prince Salms, Hemet Island, and those are the ones that get loved the most. So definitely a need for repairs. When the park developers have an option, they can do a public park, developer dedicates all the construction, a public park, and these fees collected upfront and refunded upon completion. So that would be a park that they turn over to us, but it's based on guidelines that we provide them, and then they turn the park over to us, and then we maintain that. A private park would be developer sets aside land and constructs a private park. We will collect the fees up front and partially refund that upon completion. And then the fees in lieu of, developer pays fees with no intent to construct the park. These are the current funds that are in each individual P-Quad. 30 million is taken in. Expended was 3.6 million. Eligible for reimbursement is 7.9, and so there's 19.4 million available. Restrictions are for land acquisition, development, and only for neighborhood and community parks. Funds shall not be used for operation and maintenance, regional parks, and special use areas. On our MB stat, this is just a snapshot of DOSREC. It is currently operating at 108% cost recovery. As you see, in quarter three, that expenses outpaced revenue, but that's based on our one time a year that we purchase fitness equipment for the facility, and there was a project done in that facility, and so we're on pace to continue to be at 100%, 108% cost recovery. Golf is extremely popular still. I imagine that you hear from time to time that Atlanta Park's a great golf course, but you can't get on it. And that's the truth. I mean, it's tough to get a tee time. There's a demand. It's really crazy that Starkey Park just opened up, and we're still seeing the same numbers. Last month, we did 6,500 rounds, which is Incredible. And so as you see the projections, last year we did 60,932 and this year we'll probably be right at 62,000 rounds. These are just some of the highlights. So Alligator Creek was completed, Hoffman Park surfacing was completed, Jesse Garcia, or that was, yeah, Jesse Garcia fencing, Fisher Park, we in-house, we worked on the Blackland Prairie to reestablish that because the WeSatch had taken over those areas. And then we're working on Neighborhood Park, which is one block off of Walnut on Call Street. And then we've replaced benches and grills throughout the park system. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. Go ahead.

Ken, thank you so much for keeping the park system beautiful, as it always is. I appreciate your time. I do have a few questions. Can you go back to the park development funds?

I might have the park development manager come up here, the former. He's the assistant parks director, but he's a former, just to answer any specific questions you might have.

Okay, well, last time it was updated was March of 2021. It's $2,038 per home. You don't have these numbers. I'll pull these numbers.

Yeah, I do not. Our adopted was 2018, was the last.

And the last time that number was updated was March of 2021. Okay. So that was 20, yeah. Can you speak to that?

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Council, thanks for the opportunity. Jeff Bransford, Assistant Director. Council Member Spradley, I think what you're referring to is in 2018, the last time that the ordinance was revised and adopted by Council, there was a three-year phase-in program for the fees. There was a year one in 2019, year two in 2020, and a year three in 2021 to kind of scale up the fees. So the fees that are on the screen right now were part of the adopted 2018 ordinance, but they were the year three implementation. And those have been in effect since 21.

Right. And so, in my opinion, that's like $2018, right? Even though it was phased in over those three years. And if you go to the slide where it shows it's broken down into different areas, is that required by state law?

The requirement is that the area where the fees are collected is where they need to be spent. And the way that we have implemented that in the city is by establishing these four park districts. Other communities in Texas take a very similar approach. They may not have four, they may have more or less than that, but the districts are intended to represent the area around where the new residential project is developed so that residents don't, end up paying for a new park through the purchase of their home and the developer costs, paying for a park, but have to travel across town to enjoy the benefits of it?

In my opinion, it looks unbalanced. I think it would be maybe a good idea to maybe have the funds be one fund and then have the park advisory committee maybe determine where those funds are spent. I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there.

If I may, so the park quads, the four quads, do apply to the neighborhood and community parks. And that's established through the council ordinance. If council in the future wish to establish an additional fee for regional parks, So in addition to the amounts listed on the screen, an additional fee charged to the developer that would benefit regional parks, the park quads do not apply. Those regional park revenues could be spent anywhere in the system but for regional parks.

Well, there's just me but I would like this to come in front of city council and look at these fees for parks because it's been so long since it's been updated. And it's we're asking developers to pay for pay for things. I think this is one of the things that we're short on. Right? We're park centric city, and I would like to see more money for parks personally. And then another one. On the unfunded resource request, I've seen replacement at downtown holiday lights for $70,000. Can't we partner with the county on that or perhaps the tours, downtown tours to try to get the lights replaced other than just coming out of the city budget?

That was my number one in the Parks Department. Ken and I have talked about this a lot. We have talked about potential downtown tourist funds. We have talked with some of the other entities throughout the city who have an interest in making sure that downtown holiday lights and decorations continue to expand. So we're certainly talking about different options.

Is that just for like the tree areas, not for the courthouse? The county should pay for their lights, right?

The county actually decorates the courthouse themselves. So it's everything except for the courthouse? Yeah, so what we want to do is expand down the corridors. So improve the lighting that we have currently and then expand down the corridors. So for example, during the day when you cross the San Antonio Street Bridge, it's beautiful. We've got wreaths and the poles decorated, but they're not lit up at night. And so we're looking at things like that, how to improve. this summer for the 250th, we expanded some of our holiday decor for the 4th of July down San Antonio Street across the bridge. And I think it made a really nice impact. So yeah, we're continuing to talk about that extensively.

Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate it. Council Member Carter.

Just looking from a budget standpoint, what are the fees for a non-resident golfer? Do you have a differentiation between resident and non-resident?

It depends on weekday or weekend.

Are there resident? There's not a resident, non-resident, no. Really? I think we need to look at that, council, because I can't get on the golf course at Land O' Park. I think I should be able to get on the golf course before San Antonio folks get on the golf course.

Sure.

So we need to address that. There should be a resident, because it's also much cheaper at a regular rate than most cities. So if they want to come here, they're going to come here, which is totally fine. But I think they should be paying more.

Councilwoman Shaw.

Can you talk to me about the water fountain in the square?

So, I sure can. I... the only time that we can run that fountain is when we have zero restrictions. So when we don't have any restrictions, if we're in level one, if we're in level one, then we can't run it. And that's all fountains. And it's something that I definitely would like to see change because it's a recirculating system. and so we don't have a lot of water waste. It's.

Right, so what do we need to do as a council or to get that change the ordinance so that we can just run it? I mean, it's functioning, right? Does it need repairs or is it fully functioning? It just needs.

Yeah, we requested a variance for the 4th of July for the 250th and I can reach out to MBU and staff can see what work on it. We can work on it.

Yeah, it's beautiful, and I think that it would be a great asset right downtown to have that running. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you.

And Council Member Shaw, I just want to make sure to clarify, there are two fountains downtown. The one on the plaza is City of New Braunfels. That's the one that we're talking about. There's a larger fountain that is on county property that we do not operate.

Yeah.

Any further discussion?

Yeah, the fountain was kind of a thing that I was also gonna bring up too, that's good. I'm wondering why we, you said it's circulating, but how much water does it usually take? I mean, the fountain's not really that big.

Yeah, I would say the total is about 1,500 gallons, but then it's recirculating. You would lose some from evaporation, but yeah. But in general, it would just recirculate.

I see some at apartment complexes, some fountains going on, especially in the green area. I'm just wondering, why can't our fountain run? And that's one of those things out there, just let it run, you know? And the golf fees, I did get some emails about that too. The people that don't live in the city, maybe the fee's just a little higher. The people that live in the city, they're having a hard time wanting to play golf. That's one of the big complaints that I got when I first got on board. That's a good idea. Anyone else? Thank you, thank you very much.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of city council, Isabel Laflotes, your police chief. Before I begin, I'd like to provide a little bit of clarification regarding a point raised during last night's council meeting concerning our license plate reader program. The ALPR units are primarily funded through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority Grant with a 20% match. And as was mentioned, I will be presenting a comprehensive review of this program at the upcoming council meeting on September 21st. So tonight I'm gonna present some highlights of the police department, which support our 2027 budget development for the fiscal year. We'll begin with our department organizational chart, which you can see, which is currently divided into three divisions, each led by a deputy chief. Our organization is comprised of 172 authorized sworn full-time positions and 43 authorized professional staff members. That's totaling about 215 not including any part-time, the three part-time officers that were approved in last year's budget cycle. It is important to note that this week we will hit a significant milestone for the police department. Tomorrow we will swear in or appoint six new police officers for our department. This will be the first time in our department's history that we will have exceeded our authorized strength level. That could not have been possible without the support of city management. Clearly the council who supported that initiative, they gave us the opportunity to overhire our authorized strength. and certainly the team members who work tirelessly to identify the candidates that meet the requirements, not only to be a police officer, but that fit the culture of NBPD. So I'll reference this slide and one of the following slides to discuss some current reorganization efforts. The Public Safety Strategic Plan for NBPD and NBFD, which directly supports the council's organizational excellence priority, is a carryover from last year's goals. The plan establishes clear, near, and long-term goals for both departments. It supports our individual accreditation efforts, and it strengthens coordination between police and fire. The plan will be developed with input from team members, the community, and department leadership. It will be organized around a set of strategic pillars, such as partnerships, technology, and organizational development. Each will include an overview, objectives, action steps, and evaluation methods. It's important to note that each of... Is my time up? You know, of course.

It did...

I will remember that. I even placed your patch up there, man. So as the fire chief said, this will help us kind of coordinate efforts between both departments, right? Made me lose my step, man. It's important to know that each of these goals of the plan will be measurable and will track progress along the way for the strategic plan. Should this be approved in the FY27 budget before you, we will work with a consultant who's skilled in strategic plan development, giving PD and FD leadership opportunities to be involved in that process, while at the same time maintaining departmental operations The plan will include a timeline that will embed internal and external listening sessions. That's a very important component of this is to hear from our community members of what they would like to see in their public safety departments in the years and decades to come. It will include plan drafting, rollout, and implementation. So I'm gonna spend a little time talking about reorganizational plan. So in response to and aligned with our department priority of organizational assessment and strategic planning, the department is currently undertaking a reorganization focused on operational efficiency, balance, and growth, establishing a scalable structure that guides our future budget and staffing decisions. Operationally, we are realigning roles and command structures so sworn officers are deployed where policing expertise is needed, supported by a stronger professional staff cadre. We are also balancing supervisory span of control and workload across all three divisions to improve team member experience and reduce burnout. A future state organizational chart maps the positions, ranks, and reporting lines needed as the department grows, and ties every proposed position and promotion to a measurable efficiency gain, strengthening our budget justification to the city. In essence, we will have our current organizational chart, an updated one with greater alignment and balance, and a future build-out organizational chart. I anticipate that will be a central focus for the FY28 budget request that will drive our decisions. This path forward has three clearly defined steps. One, assess the current structure. Two, realign roles and workload. And three, build a scalable future state organization. So in support of that, one of the immediate steps that we're currently undertaking which affect our performance indicators is the implementation of a power shift, of a patrol power shift, which places one officer in every district from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., which are our highest call volume hours. Our long-term goal is to have an officer in each of the 15 geographic districts 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This model has a direct impact on response times, advances geographic accountability, and further embraces community-oriented policing. Reallocating current patrol resources under this shift model achieves the goal roughly 42% of the time, up from approximately 21% of the time today. So it doubles that. This change also reflects a recommendation from our most recent third-party staffing analysis and directly addresses the response time and calls for service trends that were just presented or that will be presented shortly. This program takes effect this coming month, and so we'll be interested to see how that comes out, and we'll be able to report on the findings from that. But to get there, we know we need to position the department to pursue the U.S. Department of Justice's Community-Oriented Policing Services or COPS grant. This funding supports hiring additional officers without relying solely on the local budget, accelerates staffing improvements, and reduces the long-term financial impact on the city by offsetting some personnel costs. It also strengthens our capacity for proactive policing and community engagement and supports growth aligned with our department priorities and reorganization efforts. We're targeting this funding toward three priority areas, community engagement, special events and downtown area preparedness, and implementation of a real-time crime center. The real-time crime center will give officers immediate access to better information while en route to a call, helping them respond faster and with stronger situational awareness, improving both officer safety and case outcomes. For the community, this translates to quicker response times, more efficient use of patrol resources, and a stronger evidence base for solving crime. Lastly, in our efforts to track and report data which help inform our decisions, depicted here are key performance indicators which compare January 1st through July 31st of 2025 with the same time period in 2026. Calls for service totaled just over 42,000 or up 1.9%. As described in our annual report presentation that was presented to this council, we are tracking call priority type as the increases we saw in 2025 were in higher priority calls triggering a multiple officer response. Total arrests were down 9.4% to just under 1,800, and DWI arrests have decreased 5.3% to 444, while crashes rose 1.7% to 2,413. Our traffic stops during this time declined about 11.5%. to 12,202 while 911 calls received increased 3.4% to almost 25,000 calls. I think the figure that warrants the most attention is the average response time by priority level. If you look to the chart on the right, priority one and two response times were relatively stable but one that I'm tracking closely. I reported out last year's presentation to council in our annual report. The priority one distinction are things in which it is more of a life safety or suspect on scene type of call, so it's important for us to get there quickly. Priority three response times rose 53% and priority four rose 72%, which is a meaningful gap that informs the staffing shifts that I presented earlier. It's important to know that priority three and four calls are typically report calls, one in which the suspect is no longer on scene. And we'll report out a full year analysis during our 2026 annual report presentation to council, which will happen in early 2027. So as I look at some of the staffing requests that have been made over this year, it's relatively straightforward. The things that I am focused on is the most important thing that people look for is that when they call 911 that somebody picks up the phone. And then after that is that an officer responds. And then if you keep following that case all the way through its process, then I have to look at who's investigating that. So my focus is on investigators or detectives for the organization. But it doesn't end there. We've got records clerks and individuals who are responsible for preparing the case packets to go to trial. So for us to be able to have support staff to be able to help in that effort, our focus area is of mine. And then lastly, to be able to focus on things that are legislatively required. So you'll see in your packet that there has been a request for an open records clerk to help assist with the nearly 6,500 open records requests that we will receive this year. That is up about 5% from last year. and we handle about 80% of the open record requests that the city receives overall. So our focus in our budget requests are very simple. They're straightforward. It's making sure that if somebody calls 911, somebody picks up the phone, and we send help. And then from there, it's tracking the investigative component of those cases. So with that, I'll end and just kind of conclude this portion of it and open it up to any questions that you may have.

Go ahead, Larry.

Thanks, Chief. I appreciate the briefing. And I, as all of us up here, really appreciate the men and women of our police department. One of the things I was looking at was the e-tickets. Is that like I get a ticket on the side of the road and just Bluetooth it to my phone? How does that work?

So that is one that we have been working on for some time now. As was mentioned, I believe, a few council meetings ago, we have been focused in on updating our e-citation software platform so that officers can more efficiently be able to walk through that ticket writing process. So when I started 28 years ago, there was only one option. It was written, three copies, each got one, and you move forward, right? Some smaller agencies still do that, but that is not the most efficient way to be able to track, be able to provide reminders to individuals who receive citations or warnings. And so this is a more efficient way of doing it. We've worked across various city departments, whether it's municipal court or information technology, and clearly the police department and even code compliance because we know that they may be writing some citations as well. to select through a process, an evaluation process, a company that can update our ticket writing system. So we anticipate we will be able to launch that with the approval from council that will certainly replace a legacy system that we have that we've not been able to replace.

But e-ticket, is that an email?

So there's a variety of methods that the companies do. There's been some discussion about how do we want to do that, whether it's a QR code or it's an actual citation that is given to the individual. And so we will want to make sure that they have the variety of options available to them. So if somebody doesn't have the ability to log into a website, that they can get a paper copy of that through that process.

And I know y'all write tickets on the water sometimes.

Yes, we do.

It might come handy with some of those tubers.

Yeah, and our enforcement rate, which is the citation rate, is typically anywhere from 48 to 52%. So roughly 48, 52% of the time, they either write a citation, so the other part is typically a warning.

And can you give some examples of priority two and priority three calls?

Sure, so in an instance in which maybe somebody came home and they left their bike out front and maybe it was stolen, suspect's no longer there, they wanna make a report, there's a variety of options that people can report some lower level calls for service that aren't life safety related. They can do that online or they can call to have an officer come out. So typically what you will get is in the priority threes and fours, it is important to note that as we look at this section right here, particularly here, those are typically going to be your report calls that may wait for a while. And here's the important part of this as it relates to that is that officers to be able to use their available time and not necessarily be on a call for service gives them the opportunity to do some proactive work. And one of the things that I have found, matter of fact, I recently gave a Chief's coin to one of our officers who did a very thorough investigation. And so one of the things that I think is really important and that we changed this year is that the way that we take our reports in the field, the officers work those from cradle to grave. So from the call coming in to completing the report and typing it in. What happens when we do it in that model, as opposed to going from call to call and taking the report to the end of the shift, is that the reports are more thorough, the investigation is further complete, and oftentimes we're able to make an arrest pretty soon after the call comes in. And so I'm really proud of the work that they're doing to be able to kind of close those cases out faster, which has a downstream effect with our investigators.

And then... 911 calls received is 24,000. What about people that call in to the non-emergency number? Do you track those numbers as well?

Those are tracked separately on it, yes.

Okay. And other than that, the only other thing, yesterday we were talking about the SROs. Right. And we have, what, we're four short, five short?

I'd have to double-check my numbers. I think it's four, yeah. Are all the schools staffed with SROs? So the way we staff them is that we have some rovers that are able to take schools that are close in geographic area and be able to spend some time in there throughout the day. Our goal, which is I think the goal of MBISD from our conversations, has been to have one officer at every school and have two at the high schools. And so we are working towards that. We've talked to them about doing that as well as making sure that there's Thank you. an appropriate supervisory component related to that when we add additional officers to the SRO program.

And the SROs, they work nine months out of the year for the school district, and the other three months, basically the summer, they're working for you? Yes. And whatever duties or assignments you give them?

And every summer, we identify where the needs are within the organization. Many of them work river duties as part of that, and where it helps us, what we have found over the last, this is the second summer that I have been here, is that we tend to place them over river operations during the week, and it used to not be that. We used to have essentially coverage during the weekend, and then what happens is you start to wane in compliance for some of the rules and regulations we have on the river. This way has a little bit more consistent stream, if you will, throughout the week. And so we utilize them for them. We've had one that's been assigned to investigations to assist with that as well. So it gives them an opportunity to not only help advance initiatives for the department, but gain some knowledge along the way.

Do they also fall back to the police department during the winter break?

Yes, so they'll come to us. And so they'll have the opportunity, like any employee does, to take vacation time. But we also, what's important to note is that during the summer is really our only opportunity to provide them legislatively mandated courses to be able to get them through and maintain their proficiency. So to be able to do that.

OK. Well, I'm in favor of SRO program. And if I had to add another officer, School district pays 75% for the nine months out of the year. We pay 25% plus the three months that they go back to the police department, right? To me, I think that's a win-win. So thank you.

Councilwoman Carter.

Great job. I always enjoy your presentations. They're very fact-based and you move it along. So I think everybody, both inside and outside the city, should use that as an example or template of how to do a presentation. And I do support your full budget to include all of the officers that you requested. On this e-ticket, do you allow payment to come in with the e, I mean, so you can issue the ticket, can they issue payment to the city? I mean, just from a revenue standpoint, I'm interested.

there will be a funding stream or a way that we can route them back to the way the city currently does this because I am not immune to the fact that this has a downstream effect to the municipal court. And so we have been working with them on a way that would work for them and not put, sometimes what we find is that if there is a third party payer system that is placed on these systems, there's typically an upcharge.

for someone to pay that.

And so our goal is, in any of these things, is to change behavior and gain compliance, is not to raise funds. And so the more that we can utilize systems that doesn't add more overhead charges to the violator, I think that would be good for our community.

Well, and that's my interest, is to not create a downstream administrative cost, but get the money and just clear the court docket, or not have as many go on the court docket unnecessarily. So that would be divine. And take administrative overhead out. Also, just one recommendation that I'd like to make is, and Robert, you may do this already, is to start including ROI in these presentations. Because to me, the return on investment, if you're asking, if each department is asking me for money, and I'm not saying me personally, but From a budget standpoint, I wanna see if we spend X, we get X. And it's hard to numerate some things. I mean, for instance, SROs and all that kind of stuff, but you could. I mean, because you're saying, okay, for one FTE, or for one full FTE, I get four officers. So that's a savings. I mean, that's a way to put in an investment savings. Systems-wise, you know, if I spend this, I'm gonna save this if this event occurs. Same thing on the policing. You know, how much does that e-ticket thing, is it forecasted to just deliver back? To me, that's a very... important way to budget. That from a council decision, if we have to pick between a list of 100, if I'm spending $1,000 but I'm potentially saving four million, those make decisions a lot easier, right?

Correct, and we look at not only cost savings and return on investment, and the way that we look at return on investment may be not only cost savings, but then also what efficiencies might that bring, for example, that could make our operations and even coordination between departments a lot more efficient like the citation software system.

Because you could be deterring use of more personnel by implementing something up channel.

You could reduce the need, yes ma'am.

So to me, that's a return on investment. Correct. That's a full savings.

And we've utilized technology in that way where we've actually then either reduced the need for additional personnel or don't need to add more personnel because the software system will make us more efficient, so to speak.

But have faith accountants. Fraud deterrent is also an opportunity to save money. So if by doing X, I can save X or prevent this from happening, that's return on investment.

Yes.

In a list of your big investments that you are gonna need, if you have them aged, I think that that is important to add as well for us to get a sight line on, for instance, your drones. I'm on drones tonight. You know, but I'd also say we've got some big tractors, I'm sure, in this city. I'd like to see the forecasted timeframes that you're going to need more or new. So, because I know that those are not cheap. You're right. And I'm sure your SWAT vehicles, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I know Robert probably sees that, and I know you see that, but I think from a budgetary standpoint as a city council, we need eyes on that big stuff. I don't know if I would say it's 50,000 and more. We need some kind of way to see the future.

Sure, and much like the fire department, we don't have as many large assets as they do, but we do have a couple that are pretty high priced items and have aged. Certainly need to plan for replacements for that.

And we've got to make room somehow in this very tight budget.

That's right, and we incorporate some of that, sort of that forward-looking into the five-year forecast that we put together for you all every year, and we just presented to you all in July. We do some of that forward-looking as to see what are, one, some of the commitments that have already been made that we need to plan for, but then what are some of the unfunded items that we need to continue to reflect as to needs of the organization, no matter what department it is, but what are the needs of the organization, because that helps us then make determinations on things like property tax rates or fees, possibly to be able to support the generation of additional revenue.

And I always encourage use of Gantt charts and colors. You know, if I see something in the red, that's telling me something, right? It's telling me that it's hot and it needs to be replaced and you guys need to pay attention to it. Because when you give me books of stuff, that's great. I mean, it is great. But it can be lost in the translation. It can get lost in the shuffle. And I know you have to deal with this all the time. but if I see a Gantt chart where I've got a line, and it's showing me that the time is ticking, the time is running out, or if I see red, yellow, green, orange, it tells me something. It's more of a visual pop, okay? Just some advice. That's all I have.

Mayor Potemkovisi?

Yes, you mentioned something about, you said after the officers are sworn in tomorrow, you would be at exceed authorized force levels or staff levels. I don't remember the exact phrase you used. So we would exceed. Can you kind of just explain? Yeah, for sure. I think I know what it means just by the way the phrase words, but just tell me what that means to you.

Sure, so what I said was that we would, for the first time in MBPD history, exceed our authorized staffing levels for full-time officers. What that means is that we are allocated and approved by you, the governing board, a set number of sworn police officers for our city. It happens in cities all across the country. And one of the things that you have authorized within the past couple of quarters is the ability for us to overhire. If you recall, this was made in a 2023, I believe, staffing analysis study that recommended the ability to go over that amount by 10. And so you all made a decision to give us the ability to overhire. Now where that is so important is that typically, and I've been doing this for 28 years, is that cities will hire to their authorized strength, which in our case is 172. And then what'll happen is there'll be natural attrition. Now for our police department, we have averaged just over 11 separations a year, so roughly one a month, right? What happens is that if you only do testing twice a year, you end up in this situation where you never feel like you're kind of above the surface. And so through discussions with CMO's office about how can we average our authorized strength as opposed to being under it, It was actually something where I approached him and he said, well, by the way, that was a recommendation done years ago. I said, great, can I see that? And he gave it to me. And then from that, you all had an action to be able to do that. That helps me manage things throughout the year that aren't just hard vacancies, like I cannot fill that position, because there are also soft vacancies. Somebody gets hurt, I have an officer out on military leave, things like that, life happens. We are a people organization. And so when that happens, that ability to overhire gives me the ability to withstand some of those changes and shifts that happen throughout the year. So that is the difference. So you've got authorized staffing and then you have available staffing, which is what you have hired to fill those positions. And so we will be tomorrow at 173.

Congratulations on that and appreciate your efforts on that. And Robert as well, working with you to make that happen.

We appreciate that. Certainly our personnel and recruiting team and those that have worked with them, as you all know, we are all trying to hire the best that are out there, and all agencies are competing for the same quality people. And so the other important thing to note is of these six that are going to be sworn in tomorrow, three were referred to by individual officers here in our department. That says a lot about who we are and the culture that we've got. And so super proud, excited to swear them in and get them working.

And that also allows you to buffer for your retirements, correct? Because there could be known vacancies where you have a retirement coming.

It gives us the ability to project. And while there is an opportunity for us to be over that amount, that gives us an opportunity to advance some key initiatives that our budget just didn't get to.

So that council, when we do look at the FTE, we do have to look at the outfitting cost and vehicle cost as a separate issue, because in some cases, those are one time. And the other is, what is our replacement cycle? Not just on vehicles, but I mean, you've got wear time on body armor. Your weapons at some point in time are cycled out. I mean, the Sheriff's Department will have a shotgun sell off every so often. So I think a clear understanding of that, because we authorize five positions. Obviously, we probably have another quarter of a million on equipment if they're new positions. about 50 grand, 60 grand per vehicle, armor, everything.

It's a little bit higher than that, but yes, it's getting... It's getting a lot more.

Could be 80-ish, right?

Yeah, we were just having a conversation about one of the challenges that we're facing in the policing field is that the cost to upfit a vehicle, the cost to just do business has increased dramatically. We are looking at, you will see in your budget request for us, a partial replacement for tasers, right? That gives us the ability to start kind of working towards that. But it is becoming very expensive to manage having some of these. But what you're doing is you're trying to provide us with the most resources that we have to have a successful and safe outcome for everybody involved that we interact with. And I can't lose sight of that.

As it comes to SROs, We get a reimbursement, 75%, is that right?

Yes, sir.

And are those numbers established by the school district what they want or what we see as the security need?

So typically there are negotiations between both the district and the city and the PD is involved in that. But it's more than them covering the 75%. They're also covering... baseline overtime for those officers to ensure that we have officers on campus before the first bell rings and then after the last bell rings. And that is an important component that they are automatically paying for that. They will pick up a cost associated with a call that the officer may be on. They end up staying on late and getting overtime. The district is picking that up as well. And it's important to note that even with these SROs, had it not be for them being at these schools, these would be calls for service that a patrol officer would respond to.

In SRO, are there any alternate sources to fund the 25%? So drug education where the SRO is doing education in the schools and other things where we can get alternate resource to pay for them, DARE funds, whatever that might be. The other is, are there educational things for the officers You know, in other countries we've talked about it. Sure. SROs are actually an educational force inside teaching bicycle safety and walking home in pairs and cutting out on traffic and also becoming confidants to where kids have a comfort level of communicating with the officer all the way through high school. And it cuts down on the crime, the bullying, a number of different things.

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, and they do much more than provide visible security and enforcement. They are mentors. They are individuals who care deeply for their students. And if you saw our social media posts that we did for them yesterday, I couldn't be more proud of our SROs and the work that they do. And I've seen a lot of them train, and they are well worth their weight in gold.

Councilwoman Lovatsky?

Well, thank you for your presentation. I'm really excited about the patrol power shift that you talked about. Were you able to provide that because you're now exceeding the authorized strength? And now that you will have one officer at each district, will they be able to office Like I know I mentioned that one time. I'd love to see them to be able to office at least in one of the rooms and at the fire stations, you know, so that way they're able to, you know, just relax. Because I know y'all have it hard sometimes out there, especially during the summertime.

Yeah, we appreciate it. I don't know that I would be after that phone call relying on my – my partner in crime over here to let us use his place. But no, there's a number of things that you brought up. First, I would say being able to staff at a level higher than our authorized strength certainly helps us, but it does not solve the problem. We have 15 districts that have been pre-designated that we've looked at as it relates to balancing out calls for service within those geographic areas. and the goal really and i don't want to lose sight of this the goal is to be able to have an officer in every district 24 7 and to do that you have to factor in the number of officers that you have working this patrol ship the power shift helps us reallocate existing resources so for example we took positions that were on day shift and evening shift and created this power shift And that helps, but it doesn't solve it. And there's a reason why I use the verbiage of exceeding our authorized strength. Because if I were to use the terminology of fully staffed, it gives the impression that I don't have needs. And much like my partners in the other departments in the city, I think we've demonstrated the level of needs that exist throughout the entire organization. that we can't get there from one budget year to the next. And so my plan is to be able to walk out, as I mentioned, that organizational, the future organizational chart, to be able to anticipate what that might look like, including potentially relocating some officers to a substation at some point down the road because we have got to be able to plan for that to be able to have some runway time to uh to ensure that we've got appropriate resources for that but this does and and really credit goes to the patrol division and their leadership team for being able to do this uh casted the vision they grabbed it and were able to if you look at the numbers double the time in which we have that available that availability. But it's important to know that that's when we are above that minimum staffing because much like the fire department, we also have minimum staffing levels within the organization to ensure we have cops on the street to respond to those calls.

I have one more question. You mentioned on one of the slides, real-time crime center. Can you go over that a little bit?

Sure, so the Real-Time Crime Center will give us the ability to provide additional resources. A lot of times what happens is that we will get a call for service and there'll be information provided to the dispatcher who provides it to the officer. But sometimes if we had just a little bit more information about who it is we're about to go see, so sometimes we'll get a name and date of birth. Well, we may find out that they may have a warrant for their arrest and that they might be somebody who is known to carry firearms. That's good information for us to know before we even get there. The Real-Time Crime Center acts as a point of research, of real-time research to provide that information to the officers to determine kind of where they go. This is where it will fall into our discussion on the 21st about license plate readers and how we are able to very quickly resolve cases. For example, shootings that happen in certain areas of our town in which we can make the arrest before the sun comes up. That is directly related to our ability to funnel good information, real information that gives us suspect leads to make these arrests and make our community safer.

Thank you.

Councilman Spradley.

I just have one follow up. The difference between on this map, the police department and the fire department, fire department is working with ESD for Mayfair and Veramendi, right? We don't have that in the police department.

That's correct. We don't provide coverage to Veramendi or Mayfair. So they provide their policing services given by the county. But we have a very, and we've had multiple conversations about this, we have very different deployment strategies, right? There is an expectation that if we are, if the PD, if we are not on a call for service, that we are doing something else, right? That we are doing some proactive enforcement or engaging with community members, some other method to be able to make connections. And so our ability to get to this will certainly provide us kind of a catalyst, if you will, to be able to do more of that within our organization.

All right, thank you.

All right, I'm going to try to wrap this one up. Thank you, Chief. On your, I guess, slide 58, is there a way the next time that you have, I guess, for 2026 to have nonviolent and violent crime or aggravated assault?

Yes.

And crime by tourism and residents?

That may be a little bit harder. Is there a way to separate that? One of the good things that I'm grateful for is we've got another analyst that came through a grant that we have just hired to be able to kind of pull some of this information. And so, as you all know, we have been focused a lot on data-driven analysis for the organization. So we will certainly be able to provide some of the breakouts, as you've described, but there may be some system limitations that we're working through as well to try to kind of work through that as part of it.

Thank you, thank you. I guess that's it from up here. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I promise I'm only doing it once.

One more, Mayor. Yes, I'm it tonight and I'll keep this as brief as possible. So good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Matthew Ekman. I'm the Assistant Director of Public Works here tonight filling in for our Public Works Director, Greg Milotic. So as you can see on your screens, our Public Works Department is divided up into five operational divisions. Our infrastructure maintenance, which includes our streets, drainage, traffic, signals, and inspections. Our solid waste and recycling, fleet maintenance, facilities maintenance, and our river and watershed division. We're currently authorized 132 full-time team members, and that is divided up within these five operational divisions. So tonight I'm going to kind of talk about some highlights from a couple of our operational divisions. One topic that you all have heard quite a bit about, it was an initiative that was put into place last year, is our right-of-way beautification and maintenance. So we've really taken a strong stance this year on our right-of-ways. So both the city-owned right-of-ways as well as partnering on some of the right-of-ways that are maintained by TxDOT, but as we all know, their maintenance schedule is not up to where we would like it to be. So we developed our right-of-way beautification team this year, and part of that initiative is to get into some of these areas like the Loop, like these state-owned roadways, to be able to get in and supplement the services that TxDOT's doing throughout the year. So as some of the other directors mentioned, a lot of our items that we look at, we really are looking at data to provide us information on where we need to go and what we need to do. And so that's true with our right-of-way beautification as well. So we've continued to use data to determine where we need to service, how often we need to service on this right-of-way beautification team. We look to data that's provided from our citizens on the number of complaints that we get, the areas that we typically get the most complaints on. and providing those services and then feedback from council members on areas that need addressing. And so we tend to look at those and be able to address those as priority items to make sure that we are providing the best level of service for the community and the members that we serve. Another one of these items is an item that was our number one request this year, which is proposed in this year's budget, is the implementation of this dedicated roadway striping crew. When we look back at the number of requests that we get, especially when it comes to our roadways, it's the deterioration of the lines. The long lines on a lot of our roadways have over time gotten worse. deteriorated and you know a lot of that without an internal striking crew we can do small stuff with the machine that we currently have now but looking at these long lines we have to sub that out and we have to go to contractors which again eats up at the other money that we have to spend on a lot of our other pavement work. So this dedicated crew and the equipment that goes along with them will be able to allow us to provide service and be able to get these lines addressed and be able to provide the regulatory items that we need. And again, a further beautification of our right of ways here in town. Another one of our divisions that I wanted to highlight is our enterprise fund. It's our solid waste and recycling division. So there's a couple of things that I wanted to talk about here is really leveraging our data to make informed decisions. So y'all have had several presentations over the last year, several years on solid waste, and we've really relied on a lot of data to make our operational decisions. We've been working very heavily with our finance department and city managers this year on a five-year forecast. Councilmember Carter, to your point earlier about really looking at when we need to replace the equipment to make sure that we're doing it in the efficient timeline possible. That's one of the things we're looking at where we are looking at our fund balance requirements to be able to replace our vehicles when they need to be replaced. That way we can continue the level of service that we provide our customers every day. AGAIN, LOOKING AT OUR FUND BALANCE FOR FUTURE INITIATIVES, THE MOVE TO THE FM 306 BUILDING WHEN MBU VACATES THAT BUILDING AND THE CONTRIBUTION THAT SOLID WASTE FUND IS GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE FOR THAT. ON TOP OF THAT, LOOKING AT OUR FUND BALANCE, WE ALSO LOOK AT OUR OPERATIONAL INITIATIVES AND WHERE WE CAN USE DATA and technology to be able to support some of those things. So the implementation of our routeware software has been able to provide us an immense amount of data that we never had access to before to identify where the growth is happening, where we need to allocate future routes, future drivers, and future resources. So data has been, as Chief just mentioned, data has been really where we're going to determine a lot of our initiatives moving forward All of our divisions, but specifically solid waste. Another big number that we are super proud of this year is our recycling contamination. So as of right now, our recycling contamination is at its lowest rate that it's been in approximately 10 years. So we're currently sitting at... Let me get that exact number, 26.9%. So that is low. It's not as low as we want it to be. Our goal is to be well below 20%. And, you know, we're doing that in a number of ways. We are looking at... to reduce again less than 20%. We've been partnering with communications to achieve that goal. We are really excited about an upcoming grant that y'all heard about a couple months ago on our recycling partnership grant where we're gonna be able to install cameras to learn our waste streams on our trucks to be able to provide education and contamination detection so we can really again bring that message out to the community what is recyclable what isn't recyclable because our lower our contamination rate again the lower that we pay to process those materials when we take them to our material recovery facility So on that note, going into some of our key performance indicators, again, on this note of recycling contamination, as I mentioned, it is at our lowest rate since 2019. And that's due in part to a lot of factors. So we've really stepped up. We have a dedicated team member, one of our solid waste coordinators at a large portion of her job. is public outreach, is working, getting into the schools, to the HOAs, to the public events and really getting the message out there on recycling and proper waste diversion. We've had targeted advertising. We received a grant last year to do a card hanger program that was funded by TCEQ. We have our WasteWise app that has a plethora of resources for citizens to, you know, is this recyclable? When's my recycling day? And really a lot of educational, even a game for kids to play, you know, to learn the waste stream and learn recycling. We have a strong social media and website presence, and again, as I mentioned, the upcoming recycling partnership grant. One other one of our key performance indicators that I wanted to touch on is our drainage requests. Again, we look at the right-of-way beautification, and we receive a lot of requests on that. Drainage requests are also a significant requirement. a source of complaints and requests and calls for service that we get throughout the city. So you'll see here our average workdays to close since 2022. So you'll look at the average workdays to close as just over five working days. But what I will note is 52% of those requests are closed within two days. So generally what happens, a request comes in, it's immediately vetted by the foreman in the department, and they're assessing, is this a drainage-related concern? Is this something else? Is this an immediate concern? So you know you have our priority critical requests, clogged structures, debris, especially in times where we know it's about to rain, we wanna make sure the drainage areas are working effectively in that. So those are our priority requests, they get done. very quickly. Your non-critical requests are things like mowing, tree trimming, pavement modifications. So those are the some that you'll see, okay, if it's a mowing request in a drainage area but we know it's on our rotation for two weeks from now, we'll respond and then we'll get it closed out when we go and service that particular area. I'll note here, you see those big upticks in Q1 of each of the last two fiscal, three fiscal years. What that really is related to is things like pavement modifications. So you get a complaint that the pavement in front of my house is pooling water when we have a storm. It's hard for us during the summer months when pavement time is blowing and going and it's our prime time for getting out there and doing restoration on these streets to be able to pull a crew off and address an item like this. So you'll see in Q1, which is typically the end of the year, things are slowing down, the weather is changing, it might be a little bit more wet, that's when we're able to pull these crews off and do some of these other initiatives like pavement modifications to address some of those concerns. So that's why you see a little bit of an uptick there on the days of service for those requests because some of those get stacked and wait to a slower period of time when the crews aren't out there on the roadways doing their restoration work. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that y'all may have regarding public works.

Anybody have any questions from up here? No? Thank you very much. And I believe that is it from the presentations for item A.

No, sir, we have about, we have two more presentations. Really? Yes, sir, we have 20 slides in total. Mayor, if you'd like, do you want to take a brief recess or would you like to let the Convention and Visitors Bureau go?

Yeah, if you guys don't mind, if we could take 10 minutes, that'd be great. Sure. Starting at 8.47, be back at 8.57. Yes, sir. Is everyone okay? Has everyone had a good break? All right, go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. We'll go ahead and get started. As I said right before the break, we've got kind of two topics still under item A. The next of which is gonna be a very brief one-slide presentation on the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund, followed by representatives from the Chamber of Commerce to go through the Convention and Tourism Fund, specifically the amount that's allocated to them of hotel occupancy taxes.

Can you go to the next slide, please?

And then once we're done with that presentation, again, we're gonna end our night talking about tax rate scenarios and kind of pick up from where we left off yesterday, okay? So again, very briefly on the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund, as a reminder, under ordinance for a very long time, 50% of the city hotel occupancy taxes are dedicated to marketing and advertising and promotional efforts. Again, that's been through a contract with the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau. 15% of our local hotel occupancy taxes goes to arts and heritage associations. You award those programs on an annual basis through recommendations from the arts and heritage commissions. The remaining 35%, which we actually talked a little bit about this evening, then goes to any other lawful purpose, but the primary focus and the primary use of those funds for quite some time has been debt service associated with the expansion of the Civic and Convention Center, and partial operating costs. We talked about the Civic and Convention Center does not cover its full cost. I'll very briefly talk about kind of the trend we've seen for hotel occupancy taxes. Looking at fiscal year 23, you can see we were still kind of coming out of that kind of post-COVID surge in demand at roughly $4.9 million. In fiscal year 25, you can see that dip. That was significantly driven by the high water events that happened in Central Texas last fiscal year. It kind of really speaks to the seasonality of the New Braunfels tourism market. And you can see us kind of climbing back up to that fiscal year 23 area where we were at roughly 4.8, $4.9 million. Some additional information, if someone wanted to get some additional look at our hotel occupancy tax fund and our budget, that's on page 197. And then again, the Convention and Tourism Fund, which Ms. Tanya Pence from the Chamber can come up and begin that presentation, is on page 253. And with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Mrs. Pence. My name is Tanya Pence.

I had the privilege to lead the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which manages tourism for our wonderful city. What I wanna do here tonight is talk to you a little bit about who we are, why we exist, kind of our learnings, our successes, and then obviously the budget and what we do with those dollars. We are a very, we're a playpen of acronyms is what we are. So we are the Convention and Visitors Bureau. You will hear that referred to as the CVB. And when we talk in our realm with our other peers, we refer to ourselves as Visit New Braunfels because that is the more recent nomenclature for that. We operate on your budget and your line item on the Convention and Tourism Fund, which is CTF. We have had a contract with the city since 1971 to implement those funds, as Jared said, for marketing and advertising of tourism. Currently, we are in year two of a five-year contract. Just to let y'all know, it hasn't been one constant contract for 55 years. It has changed and evolved and it gets renewed regularly. And we are funded through hotel occupancy tax, which is hot. You will hear that a whole lot as well. Hotel occupancy tax is paid primarily by visitors. So if you stay in a hotel, a motel, a bed and breakfast, or a short-term rental, you pay hotel occupancy tax. That is the state of Texas, 100%. Every city in the state of Texas does that, and most states in our country do as well. The state of Texas has a 6% tax. That goes directly to the state. The city of New Braunfels has a 7% tax. In Texas, the max can be 18%. So right now, the city of New Braunfels with the state, the total is 13%. Texas allows you 18. I wanted to give you some comparisons. Houston and San Antonio are at 17, San Marcos is at 15. So we are on the lower end of that and we are doing really great with those numbers. Hotel occupancy tax is restricted by state law and how it can be used. And I'll talk about this a little bit more as we move forward, but we hear a lot about why are we bringing visitors here? Shouldn't we use it on police and roads in our school districts? We don't directly, we cannot legally spend our hot tax directly on that, but I'm gonna show you how indirectly it does benefit those resources. So that 3.5, well, we get half, right? So I said 7%. Our contract is 3.5. What does that equate to? It equates to about $2.3 million a year. Please note, that sounds like a whole lot of money. And it is. If someone came to me and said, you can have $2.3 million tomorrow, I would probably retire. But in marketing world, that's just not a whole lot. especially when you look at the cities that we market to. What you see here on this map are the 11 cities that we do marketing to. Not all cities receive the same amount of marketing, but our four largest markets where the majority of our visitors come from are Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are our largest overnight markets, as you would expect, right? Just naturally, they're further away than in Austin or San Antonio. When you look at Houston and DFW, they are two of the largest cities in the United States, not just Texas. So when you're talking about spending money to advertise in those cities, those dollars are right up there with New York, Chicago, LA. It's very, very expensive. We have an amazing team, and we are very strategic in how we do our marketing. We use Placer AI technology to let us know where our visitor's coming from. boil that down to zip codes and so we are doing zip code marketing. We don't necessarily market to the whole city of Houston. I kind of have that example here. If you were to market to the whole city of Houston for one month, it would take up our whole entire budget and it would be done. Currently we are able with this budget to market about 20 to 30 weeks. Like I said, not every city has the exact same marketing plan, but we try to leverage the dollars we have to get the most reach and the most frequency to receive the highest rate of return. We hear this a lot. You say you do all this marketing, but we never ever see it. Well, okay, that's a good thing, because we're not asking you guys to come stay here in New Braunfels, so that's good. But I wanted to show this tonight. This is one of our newest spots. It has not aired yet. It will air September, October, November. So Gail, could you play it for us, please? So this is just one. Sorry, I don't know if you could hear it very well. You can see all of our spots on our YouTube. If you go to visit mbtx.com, there's a YouTube channel, and you can see everything there. And this is one of our newest ones. In a minute, I'll talk about year round marketing, which is something you heard Jared talk about with the high water events and what that looks like. Oh, perfect, thank you. But anyway, I wanted to share that with you guys, which leads us to year-round visitation. As you noticed, that spot I told you was going to air September, October, November. It featured some of our worst best friends, along with things you can do on the river that isn't tubing or isn't Schlitterbahn. It's paddle boarding, kayaking. As we all know, New Braunfels is an amazing place, 365 days a year, and there's something to do here all the time. The weather is great really most of the time, and there's no reason we should only be marketing for people to come here during the summer. We need them to come here 12 months a year. It helps with several, several things. It does help with overcrowding, but more importantly, it helps support our businesses year-round, and it creates more stable jobs, and that's what's important to our businesses and our residents here. This chart on the right, which you can see, is 2024. The majority of dollars, close to 40%, was being spent to advertise to get people to come here for the summer. Currently we're at about 28% for the summer and we're trying to level set that through the rest of the quarters and we are still seeing positive visitation. So we believe what we're doing is not hurting us, it's helping us and it's helping our residents and our local businesses. KPIs, key performance indicators. Currently hotel occupancy tax is at 3%. That is through May. We don't have it sooner just because it takes time for those numbers to come in and people to pay and get that reporting done. So we're excited about that. What you see in this chart right here are the three main KPIs that we report on on a consistent basis. We look at several others, so if you ever want to go deep dive into data, let me know and we are happy to do that with you guys. But these three things kind of really roll everything up into what is the most important. So that top, or that kind of middle line, 2025 fiscal year, visitation was down 5%. You could see that in the numbers that Jared showed leading up to this presentation. We had two high water events, one in June and obviously the catastrophic one in July. As soon as that happened, cancellation started. Businesses could not recover from that. We did investment spend, just so y'all know. We did have some additional dollars that we put in trying to recuperate that as much as we could in the fall. but it did affect our visitation. Overnights were up 5% and spend was up four. The bottom line is 2026 fiscal year to date, so this is through July. Visitation is positive 2%. Our overnights and visitor spend is only through June. Again, that's just the data. It takes time for that data to come in, but we're looking good so far. What you see at the bottom half of that slide is markets receiving advertising. So these are all the markets that we spend money in. When we report just on visitation, that negative five and that plus two, we don't say that's just who we're advertising to. That's just who all comes here no matter what. So when you look at where we're advertising to, you'll see we're positive. in all but one market, which is Dallas-Fort Worth, and it's slightly negative. And Dallas and Houston have been trending negative over the past 12 months. Houston is coming positive. Dallas has a lot of things, and my story is I just drove my son back from New York to New Braunfels, and the only place we had traffic was Waco, Texas. So that makes that longer. What used to be a three and a half hour drive 25 years ago is now a four and a half, five hour drive. I think we all know that. We probably all make that trip. And they also just opened a Universal Studios. And Fort Worth received amazing accolades for the Taylor Sheridan's films being filmed there. And people just weren't leaving. So anyway, we feel really good about our marketing strategy and what it's doing. 2025 Economic Impact. This is perhaps my favorite slide because we talk about tourism and we talk about visitors, but really tourism and visitors are so important because it's important to our city and it's important to the residents and it's important to the businesses that are here. That we hire someone who, an outside consultant does this for us, they do it every year. We welcome six million visitors annually. That's huge, that is so many people. We have 3,000 rooms, that is a culmination of hotels, motels, bed and breakfast, and short-term rentals. We have an economic impact of $1.3 billion. That billion, that just amazes me every time, right? It's really significant as to what the impact tourism has on a town like New Braunfels. Tourism generated $57.4 million in taxes. A number that's not on here is what went directly to the city of New Braunfels, and that was $31.7 million went directly to the city of New Braunfels. And that's a 20% increase since 2022. responsible for 16,000 jobs, over 16,000 jobs, which is about a third of total employment, over $376 million in wages. And from a resident perspective, if you're a homeowner, the property tax savings annually in 2025 was $725 because of the hospitality industry. I lost my clicker. Budget, so this is the nitty gritty. Close to 50% of the entire budget is spent on advertising and public relations. 31% admin, there's a contingency of 10% which I will talk you through in a minute. Research is three and operations is 8%. Going through, if you look at the beginning fund balance, that's just kind of what we start with. Revenue is hotel, motel tax. That's what we're projected to come in. That is the 3.5% of the 7%. Total revenues, you'll see that number there. I do want to address, there's a number there that's a negative. It says TRUEP, negative 261767. What that is is in 2025, we showed y'all those numbers were negative, right? We did not meet expectations. The way the contract reads is the city pays the CVB quarterly according to projection. And so essentially the city overpaid us. There was not enough hotel occupancy tax dollars to cover those payments. So this is how we pay it back. We don't actually write the city a check. We just take it out of the future revenue. Does that make sense? Okay. I wanted to make sure I explained that correctly. As far as expenditures go, admin, that is a 3% cost of living increase. It's what you see there from the 830 to the 852. Convention services does have a slight increase. We are really excited that we now have someone to support our convention and group business. That's so important. We've been hearing that from our hotels and our businesses because what that does is it brings people here Monday through Wednesday, which is when we kind of have that lag, right, and that really helps our hotels and our hospitality-driven businesses. Sports services, it's a small increase, but it's an increase. It's because Zip Park is now here and we can help partner with the Parks Department and work through that. Brochure graphics and creative, there's a slight increase there. Not because we're producing more brochures, I promise you we're not. But we are being more... technical about it, right? We're opening, we're relocating our visitor center and we'll have screens in there where people can touch and interact and have things to do and so that's where that little increase comes from. Advertising, we're pretty much doing the same thing we've been doing, it just costs a little more every year to do. Facilities and operations is down just a little bit. I just mentioned we are relocating our visitor center, and so we had some one-time expenses in this year's budget that we knew we had to put in there, and we will not have those next year, so that's where you see that decrease. Everything else is pretty much the same. You'll see a contingency one time in there, and I'm gonna try to explain it the best I can. I might get Jared to help me with this. But when we redid the contract two years ago, before that, the city kinda paid the CVB whenever. It was not on a schedule, and it was kinda like, oh, we're running short on money, can you give us some? It was kinda, even though we knew the number, And so when we redid the contract, we were in a position where we could like true that up. And it was to the tune of $671,742 actually from 2015 to 2025. And so the city paid the CVB those dollars and we've been spending that incrementally over the past couple of years and that's what's remaining of that. Any questions? There's a couple more slides. I'm gonna ask Jonathan Packer, our CEO, to come up here and walk through that. But if anyone has any questions on what I've presented, I'd be happy to answer anything you have.

Thank you for the presentation. I have seen one of the advertisements at the Austin Airport. Oh, okay. I was like, you better not have seen it here. But it went so quick. I think it was eight or nine seconds long. It was like, was... sitting in the airport for a while. Oh, okay, yeah, that was ours. But have you ever decided to advertise major events like at COTA, NASCAR, F1, Grand Prix, South by Southwest, or maybe the baseball stadiums on the marquees where they sometimes like the Astros or the Rangers or?

Yeah, I would love to be able to market in Astros at Minute Maid Park. That would be amazing. Things like that are really expensive, but we do do some kind of smart things with what we do. So with South by Southwest specifically, we did a targeted campaign. So we targeted people digitally that were in kind of that South by Southwest. They have different pockets, right? So we picked the pockets that we thought the people would go to that had the highest propensity to visit us. And so we targeted them digitally with ads on their phone. We also did some things with ride share. In Austin, some of the Uber and Lyft have wraps on their cars and have digital displays, especially during special events, and so we advertise there. So we are trying to be very tactical with what we're doing in advertising around events. the airport advertising that you saw was during f1 and south by southwest that is on purpose right people are going into the austin airport during that time and so yes those are great ideas we are trying to do that and if you have more let me know we're completely up for it but yes we are trying to leverage that as much as possible anyway that's my only uh comment really i think if you were able to target and

What are you doing for like the winter months, January, February, and March when we actually need more visitors? That's like the time when all the visitors are home doing whatever.

It is. We're really focusing on girls trips and romantic getaways is kind of the theme for that time. And we've actually seen a lot of traction more on the girls getaways than romantic, just side note. But we feature culinary, wine, shopping, those types of things, right? Really elevated experiences. And we have some really great experiences here.

And now partner with local businesses and to capture all the ideas.

Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. Yes, sir. Councilwoman Shaw.

The map that showed where we advertised, do we only advertise in Texas? Yes, ma'am.

We do. And there's a reason for that. The majority of our visitors, about 85% of our visitors, come from inside the state of Texas. The rest, anecdotally, Canada, California. You get a couple from New York, which is kind of strange. Maybe it was me driving back.

And we do get some from Germany, because that's just natural.